Some flights to and from the U.S. were cancelled on Wednesday even after AT&T and Verizon scaled back the rollout of high-speed wireless service that could interfere with aircraft technology that measures altitude.
International carriers that rely heavily on the wide-body Boeing 777, and other Boeing aircraft, cancelled early flights or switched to different planes following warnings from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Chicago-based plane maker.
Airlines that solely or mostly fly Airbus jets, including Air France and Ireland’s Aer Lingus, seemed less affected by the new 5G service.
Airlines had cancelled more than 320 flights by Wednesday evening, or a little over two per cent of the U.S. total, according to FlightAware. That was far less disruptive than during the Christmas and New Year’s travel season, when a peak of 3,200, or 13 per cent, of flights were cancelled on Jan. 3 due to winter storms and workers out sick with COVID-19.
A trade group for the industry, Airlines for America, said cancellations weren’t as bad as feared because telecom providers agreed to temporarily reduce the rollout of 5G near airports while industry and the government work out a longer-term solution.
At O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Sudeep Bhabad said his father-in-law’s flight to India was cancelled.
“They have to resolve this problem,” Bhabad said. “It would have been a lot better if they had resolved it way before and we knew this in advance, instead of, like, finding out when we are here at the airport.”
Potential interference
Similar mobile networks have been deployed in more than three dozen countries — but there are key differences in how the U.S. networks are designed that raised concern of potential problems for airlines.
The Verizon and AT&T networks use a segment of the radio spectrum that is close to that used by radio altimeters, devices that measure the height of aircraft above the ground to help pilots in…