November 16, 2021 FAA vs FCC

The Liberty Gazette

November 16, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

A couple of common questions we hear are: how does a pilot know how to land at an airport without an air traffic control tower, and how do conditions in the air or on the ground affect our flight? Legally, pilots are charged with the full responsibility of knowing “all available information” that affects their flight – all of it. 

One of the new pieces of information will come from the FAA on December 5. Note that this is the date that the FCC said 5G service is supposed to be available. But 5G is scary, even to the FAA. So now those two oversized government agencies will have to duke it out. Which does the American public want more? Increased bandwidth or safe flights? Pick one.

Washington, D.C. is where problems are born. The FCC sold little slices of the frequency pie to investors of a private 5G network. Unfortunately, these little slices are in a frequency range dangerously close to the radio band dedicated to aircraft radar altimeters, used with instrument landing systems.

Since the FCC isn’t willing to restrict 5G antennas from placement near 46 major U.S. airports, the FAA will issue a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin and an Airworthiness Directive. Both are strong actions, and what they mean is that if a certain condition becomes true, then pilots and crew must take certain actions. 

That “certain condition” is the aircraft’s radar altimeter indicating erroneous altitudes due to 5G signals between towers and satellites. And that “certain action” will affect the possibility of landing using the instrument landing system.

Think about the times you’ve been on an airliner, descending to land, and you go through a low cloud layer. For each runway, there is an altitude which an aircraft cannot go below if the pilots cannot see the runway. Therefore, a decision has to be made when reaching that land/don’t land minimum altitude. 

While there are airliners are equipped to auto-land in near-zero visibility at specific airports, this feature can only be used by pilots who are trained to use that system. These approaches require radar altimeters to determine the aircraft’s height above the runway. But if the instrument that provides this information suddenly receives signal interference, the radar altimeter can become unreliable, and the landing cannot be completed. 

Since we cannot have airplanes taking off if their ability to land is uncertain, this could lead to many delays and cancellations, because right now, 5G appears to wield a significant threat to safety of flight.

Even if it is possible to modify the altimeters to shake off the stray energy that will come from 5G cell phones, that will come at an enormous cost, and the FCC isn’t offering to pay for it. It’s a fair bet that airlines may not be in a position to refit the instruments in their entire fleet. Certainly not by December 5. Interestingly, Canadians have solved the problem by structuring no-5G-zones near major Canadian airports. That may be the only thing Canada is doing right these days.

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