While major foreign airlines have cancelled flights into the US based on fears about today’s C-Band 5G rollout, domestic flights within the US seem to be unaffected, according to arrival and departure boards at major airports.
Verizon and AT&T today plan to launch additional 5G channels on the C-Band 3.7-3.8GHz frequencies, which have been a subject of dispute between the mobile and air-travel industries.
According to the airlines, the C-Band rollout will imperil the performance of radio altimeters, which help planes judge their altitude. The airlines say the rollout will lead to widespread delays and cancellations of flights in bad weather.
Yesterday, Verizon and AT&T agreed to somewhat larger “exclusion zones” for C-Band launches around airports, with C-Band-free approaches lengthened from 1.3 to 2 miles.
PCMag checked the arrival and departure boards around 7:30 a.m. ET at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and Chicago’s Midway Airport, both of which are in cities with C-Band rollouts today; as well as Seattle, Portland, and Nashville, all of which both have C-Band rollouts and projected bad weather, according to Weather.com.
At Seattle, which is currently cloudy with projected rain later today, only Alaska Airlines has reduced its domestic flight schedule, and it has only cancelled a few. The cancellations don’t appear to match up to airplane models that haven’t been cleared by the FAA as safe to function near C-Band. The Seattle Times says the fog ceiling today is not currently low enough to trigger potential restrictions.
Cancelled flights AS2190 and AS2186 use the Embraer 175 jet, which has not been cleared, but still-operating flight AS3311 also uses the E175, and is flying. Cancelled flight AS169 uses the Airbus 320 which, according to an earlier FAA statement, has been cleared. However, The Seattle Times says Alaska’s Airbus jets use a model of altimeter which has not been cleared.
At Portland, where rain is expected all morning, the arrivals board shows mostly normal performance, with two Alaska Airlines flights cancelled and other flights roughly on time.
At Nashville, where Weather.com says rain is likely for the next several hours, the arrivals board currently doesn’t show any cancellations at all. Cancellations could develop throughout the day, of course, but airlines concerned about C-Band would likely have done proactive cancellations, and we’re just not seeing it.
Foreign Airlines Slash Flights
The blasé attitude of the domestic airlines to the C-Band launch comes in contrast to large, foreign airlines, many of which proactively cancelled flights into the US yesterday.
According to CNN, Air India, ANA, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa, and British Airways have all cancelled flights. Virgin Atlantic and Air France-KLM have not.
The airlines’ concerns appear to be around the Boeing 777 jet model. While the FAA has cleared several airliner models’ altimeters for use in C-Band areas, the 777 is not currently on the list.
Technology analyst Tim Farrar explains in a blog post that the FAA has not issued as many approvals as expected, not because aircraft have failed tests, but because the FAA has “failed to complete its analysis” of some plane models.
C-Band networks are currently active in Japan, the UK, and France.
