Expect flight delays from this weekend as airline 5G mess still not over

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

The airline 5G mess still isn’t over where some planes with older radio altimeters could be confused by strong 5G signals when making their final approach to US airports.

Airlines were given until July 1 to update their fleets, but some won’t meet this weekend’s deadline for three reasons, and their flights will be subject to delay as a result.

As satellite TV is essentially no more, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided it made sense to reallocate these frequencies to something else. As they were suitable for 5G use, it auctioned off the rights to use them to mobile carriers.

Another government agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), appeared to discover this fact after the event. It said that there was a risk of 5G C- band spectrum interfering with radio altimeters.

The FAA expressed doubts that airlines would be able to update their entire fleets by July 1, proposing to move the deadline back to February 2024. That proposal was rejected, but it now seems the FAA was right.

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