Air India and several other international airlines, have curtailed or canceled their flights into some cities in the United States. This is amid growing uncertainty over how the new 5G cellphone towers may interfere with critical operational equipment on board the aircraft.
Aside from Air India, Emirates, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines all announced service cuts citing the rollout of C-band 5G as it could potentially interfere with some airplane instruments.
Media reports have it that following the warning of the airlines, the US telecom giants have now decided to temporarily limit 5G services around some airports.
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The affected AI flights
#FlyAI: Due to deployment of the 5G communications in USA,we will not be able to operate the following flights of 19th Jan'22:AI101/102 DEL/JFK/DELAI173/174 DEL/SFO/DELAI127/126 DEL/ORD/DELAI191/144 BOM/EWR/BOM Please standby for further updates.https://t.co/Cue4oHChwxJanuary 18, 2022
“#FlyAI: Due to deployment of 5G communications in USA, our operations to USA from India stand curtailed/revised with change in aircraft type from 19th January 2022,” Air India tweeted. The airline said it will not be able to operate the Delhi-JFK-Delhi and Mumbai-EWR-Mumbai flights, among others.
The flights affected (for today) are: AI101/102 DEL/JFK/DEL, AI173/174 DEL/SFO/DEL, AI127/126 DEL/ORD/DEL, AI191/144 BOM/EWR/BOM. However, the airline said that it will operate the flight to Washington DC from Delhi (AI103) on Wednesday.
The C-band 5G issue explained
The airline industry has been sceptical about the C-band 5G that US telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon were set to deploy from today. The fear from the airlines is that the new C-band airwaves could interfere with sensitive radar altimeters on certain aircraft.
Airline companies claim that in the event of bad weather, cloud cover or even heavy smog, pilots would only be able to do visual approaches as their altimeters could be affected by potential interference. The companies don't want 5G roll out in the runways.
The telecom companies, for their part, say this 5G technology is operating safely and without causing harmful interference to aviation operations in almost 40 countries around the world.
Anyway, AT&T and Verizon, which had to hold on to their rollout earlier too, have both announced that they would further delay activating 5G on some towers around certain airports.
But the issue looks far from being resolved to anyone's satisfaction.
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