The airlines urged action to ensure “5G is deployed except when towers are too close to airport runways until the FAA can determine how that can be safely accomplished without catastrophic disruption”. “Multiple modern safety systems on aircraft will be deemed unusable causing a much larger problem than what we knew … Airplane manufacturers have informed us that there are huge swaths of the operating fleet that may need to be indefinitely It also warned that flight restrictions will not be limited to poor weather operations.
“Immediate intervention is needed to avoid significant operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of needed medical supplies,” Reuters reported the letter as saying. The airlines had requested “that 5G be implemented everywhere in the country except within the approximate 2 miles (3.2 km) of airport runways” at some key airports. “We will continue to work with all stakeholders to help ensure that new 5G service can coexist with aviation safely.”Īs part of the agreement – which was dated 3 January – AT&T and Verizon agreed to create buffer zones around 50 US airports to reduce interference risks and take other steps to cut potential interference for six months.īut the agreement to delay wider implementation of the technology to 19 January is about to expire. “Safety is and always will be the top priority of US airlines,” it said. In a letter dated 4 January, the group thanked Buttigieg, Dickson and Deese for “reaching the agreement with AT&T and Verizon to delay their planned 5G C-band deployment around certain airports for two weeks and to commit to the proposed mitigations”. “To be blunt, the nation’s commerce will grind to a halt,” the executives said.Īirlines for America, the lobbying group that organized the letter, and government agencies were not immediately available for comment. “This means that on a day like yesterday, more than 1,100 flights and 100,000 passengers would be subjected to cancellations, diversions or delays,” the letter cautioned, adding a call for urgent action to be taken. They warned new C-Band 5G technology could interfere with critical airplane instruments such as radio altimeters – which judge the distance from the ground to the bottom of the flying vessel – and have an impact on low-visibility operations. “Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded,” the letter, signed by the chief executives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue, as well as freight and parcel carriers UPS and FedEx, said.
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