Pei Yu, a reporter of this newspaper, reported from Beijing
With the uncertainty of the global COVID-19 epidemic still existing and the epidemic repeated, it is not too unexpected that international flights to the United States have been cancelled or suspended. However, within a week beginning January 19, 2022, some flights to the United States were suspended for other reasons.
That's why 5G. In late 2021, the U.S. civil aviation regulatory authority, the FAA, issued a relevant airworthiness directive requiring certain flight operations to be banned in the 5G environment, and said that the 5GC band signals to be promoted by U.S. operators may have an impact on including radar altimeters. This approach of the FAA has opened up a game between the civil aviation community and telecom operators, and some airlines have had to partially suspend or cancel their flights to some cities in the United States.
The information verified by the reporter of China Business Daily shows that these airlines include at least Emirates, Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways and so on. These partially cancelled U.S. destinations are generally San Francisco, Dallas Fort Worth, Orlando, Seattle, Miami, Newark, Houston, Chicago and Boston.
A management source of a multinational company told reporters that he was notified by Emirates that the flight scheduled for January 18 to Newark International Airport in New York, USA, was cancelled, and the ticket he held could be used after the route at the destination airport was resumed, at which time, the airline would contact him voluntarily.
However, national flights to airports in other cities in the United States were not affected, and the destination airports for these international routes were New York JFK, Los Angeles International, and Washington Dulles International. The reporter learned that some foreign airlines have told their customers that if they must go to the United States, they can choose these airports first, and then change to other domestic flights or other means of transportation to reach their original destination.
All this is related to the game between the US FAA and 5G telecom operators. An airline source familiar with this situation said that after the dispute between 5G and telecom operators, in order to reduce the trouble caused by it in actual operation, the US civil aviation regulatory authorities have identified and assessed the extent to which the 5GC band may affect the radar altimeter by model and airport, and formed a temporary list, including Airbus A320s, A330, A350 and Boeing 737, 747, 757, 767 and MD-11 aircraft. as well as New York JFK International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport.
"However, this does not include the Boeing 777 model, on the international route to the United States, the Boeing 777 is one of the main models, many foreign airlines temporarily have no aircraft to replace, so they can only partially suspend flights on this route first, waiting for other aircraft that can be operated to replace." He explained to reporters.
This analysis of his was confirmed by Japan Airlines. The airline recently explained to its customers that the 5GC band service, which U.S. telecom operators have begun to use, will interfere with the radar altimeter on the Boeing 777 model. Japan Airlines said that it was for this reason that it affected some flights to the United States.
The 5GC band service that led to all this was supposed to start on January 19, 2022, local time in the United States, and its operators were at ATT and Verizon, the two major telecom giants. After spending a lot of money, they bought the operating rights of the 5GC band from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In February 2021, the FCC sold the right to use the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz band in the C-band by auction, and the final auction price was as high as $81 billion, and the people who obtained this use right included T-Mobile US in addition to ATT and Verizon.
But this has created a "public strip" of interest sensitivity between the two U.S. government regulators. According to the reporter's review of the US FAA statutory information, in 2020, the FAA and the US Aeronautical Radio Technical Commission (RTCA) reviewed whether the 5G network would affect the safety of aviation flights, and finally formed a review report.
The review report pointed out that 5G networks in the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz band will cause interference to radio altimeters on civil aircraft. In the report cited by the FAA, the RTCA also specified the sources of interference from 5G signals, including 5G radio base stations on the ground and even mobile phone users. Notably, the RTCA report is still under review, including the radio frequency regulatory authorities in the United States.
A senior person in the aviation manufacturing industry told reporters that globally, the working frequency of general aircraft is between 4.2 and 4.4GHz, while the frequency band approved by the FCC is between 3.7 and 3.98GHz. The two frequency bands are very close, so there is a possibility of interference.
He also explained that radar altimeters are important components of civil aviation aircraft and are mainly used to measure the distance between aircraft and the ground, that is, the altitude at which the aircraft is located. In general, this device will play a more important role when the aircraft lands, and the flight control system needs to accurately read the data generated by the radar altimeter during the landing.
"U.S. telecom operators have always argued that the FAA cites what is mentioned in the report and there is not enough evidence to prove the existence of such interference, so operators have initially insisted on promoting new 5G services, while the aviation industry has raised objections." A familiar airline source said. Since then, the U.S. secretary of transportation has written to the CEOs of ATT and Verizon, asking them to suspend the launch of new C-band-based 5G services. During this period, the US FAA selected 50 airports and required operators not to deploy 5G networks at these airports.
According to the reporter's official information on ATT and Verizon, on January 18, 2022, local time in the United States, two telecom operators released information and decided to suspend the promotion of new 5G wireless network services around the airport. However, areas other than airports will continue to be promoted as originally planned. This compromise between the two sides even "alarmed" the WHITE HOUSE, which issued a statement saying that it was willing to see such a situation.
In the field of 5G technology, China started earlier and has more applications, but there is no problem of 5G interfering with flight-related data. The aforementioned aviation manufacturing enterprises explained to reporters that the mainstream application frequency band of China's 5G is 3.5G and 4.8G, and there is a large "distance" between 4.2 and 4.4 GHz in the civil aviation field, while the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz approved by the US FCC is too close to the frequency band in the field of civil aviation flight. Therefore, there is no problem of 5G interfering with civil aviation flights in China.
On January 7, 2022, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Transport issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Civil Aviation (hereinafter referred to as the "Planning"). The "Plan" clearly proposes to accelerate the expansion of 5G, big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, Beidou system and other technologies for civil aviation applications.
(Editor: Hao Cheng Proofreader: Yan Jingning)
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