Nuked At & T and Verizon have rolled out their upgraded 5G C-band equipment. The 5G C-band will be available in September.
The FCC and carriers had voiced concerns that the upgraded cellular tech could interfere with vital safety equipment on planes. The FCC, carriers insisted it was safe, pointing to similar rollouts in dozens of other countries.
The large-scale delays and cancelations had n’t come to pass. American Airlines’ CEO reportedly predicted that’ I do n’t think you’re going to see any material disruption going forward because of this’.
Many of the large jets used by major airlines have been deemed safe by the FAA. The FAA issued a directive on Tuesday banning all major airlines from landing at airports where 5G interference could occur.
The radar altimeter helps pilots land in bad weather with low-visibility conditions. Its job is to figure out how far away the plane is from the ground.
In older generation airplanes, that was sort of an isolated system that the pilot would read and interpret. In more modern planes, that data is accessible to and used by a wide variety of other systems such as brakes or spoilers.
The FAA put out notices restricting how planes could land at airports where the rollout was happening. The FAA says it has to re-evaluate the clearances every month, based on how the carriers roll out their service.
‘Verizon could have literally shut the entire 5G network down nationally on Wednesday, and it would n’t have mattered because the FAA had already issued its airworthiness directive’.
By January 25th, the FAA estimated that 90 percent of the US commercial fleet had an altimeter cleared for’the most low-visibility approaches in 5G deployment’. By January 20th, that number was up to 78 percent.
About 53 percent of the regional fleet’s aircraft has n’t been cleared or has limited clearances that do n’t include several airports.
The RAA represents the regional airlines that fly for United, Delta, American, Alaska, and more. In other words, many of the planes used by regional airlines might not be allowed to land at some airports if the weather is bad.
On Monday, all flights taking off or landing at the airport were canceled because of fog. The planes that land at PAE are Embraer 175s. The altimeter in those planes is only cleared if it’s a certain distance away from C-band towers.
Altimeter could be certified for use in an airplane, but that’s not the end of that journey. It also has to be approved for the installation in a particular airplane.
The underperforming altimeters could be tweaked to work by changing the frequency or adding shielding. Even then, they’d still have to be re-certified.
The RAA argues that it’s wrong for the airlines to be on the hook after they spent millions on these altimeters.’these altimeters met and exceeded the regulatory standards, yet the investments may be completely undermined by 5G signal interference at many, many airports,’ Black said.
Black called for telecom and aviation companies to work together to make sure that C-band could be rolled out without creating more problems with the FAA. Said that there was’complete collaboration among industries so that solutions were workable for all’.
At & T and Verizon have said they’ll stop creating special buffer zones in July’unless credible evidence exists that real-world interference would occur if the mitigations were relaxed’.
