The 5G Threats To Airplanes Quietly Recedes - Slashdot

Posted by BeauHD

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  The 5G got used up RC’ing people via vaccines.

• another Y2K-style manufactured freakout.
  and no one ever seems to learn anything from them.
  can you say "gullible"? sure you can.

  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    Two different scenarios. The Y2K shit was real, but was taken seriously so nothing happened. If there was a crack on a bridge and upon repair the bridge didn’t collapse, does that mean it was wrong to fix it?

    • Re:

      Neither Y2K nor a crack in a bridge are progenitors of the end of the world or airplanes crashing. Yet that is how these things get treated in the press. It's nothing more trhan a pure headline-grab. Perhaps a more-reasoned approach to these things than total freakout is indicated.
      But that wouldn't get any press at all, now would it?

      • Re:

        Things can be real problems that require real work to fix and the press can sensationalize and exaggerate at the same time, they're not mutually exclusive.

        • Re: again and again and again and ...

          and thing can be total bull, too. like airplanes crashing due to 5G. or all computers crashing. or...
          it's mass manipulation for profit, plain an simple.

      • Re:

        On what 5G frequencies have the telcos deployed their new 5G hardware? Not all 5G freqs are in the same band.

      • Re:

        The problem is it's very hard to assess risk (probability times consequence) when the probability is near zero and the consequence is near infinity.

• by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Thursday July 06, 2023 @07:58PM (#63663564)

  The FCC already did the testing to prove 5G was safe, but the airlines freaked out and the FAA backed them up. It turned out to be a pissing match between federal agencies, and the FAA was clearly in the wrong. But they felt they had to look vigilant after the 737Max fiasco.
  Moral of the story: the FAA is still messed up.

  • The FCC already did the testing to prove 5G was safe, but the airlines freaked out and the FAA backed them up. It turned out to be a pissing match between federal agencies, and the FAA was clearly in the wrong. But they felt they had to look vigilant after the 737Max fiasco.
    Moral of the story: the FAA is still messed up.

    No, the FCC tested it on current generation aircraft. Like the 737-MAX series of jets, and those were fine.

    If you were flying older 737 series, you were screwed. Now, the big airlines like United and such, were migrating to the 737 MAX so this did nothing that speed up those plans. It was the smaller airlines as well as foreign airlines that had issues as they often flew the older equipment. Those airlines generally adapted by flying unaffected equipment to those airports instead, or retrofitting, or taking precautions (if you know you're going to get errorneous readings, then you use procedures where that equipment isn't working which might limit the weather you can accept).

    So bad news if you want to fly a 737 non-MAX as those have basically been sold off to other airlines. The big guys simply swapped those routes with 737 MAX jets (just a little shuffling around, nothing major as it's 737 type compatible).

    So yes, a y2k style yawner, only because once the problem was found, it was resolved - either flying new equipment, avoiding use of problematic equipment, or working around the problem. All perfectly acceptable solutions.

    • Re:

      Delta has a small number of A319/320's that still have altimeters for which this is a concern - not that there actually has been a documented incident with them, just that those particular altimeters have not been certified to not possibly be susceptible to interference issues. For now, the aircraft in question are still being used, just put on different routes so as to avoid several specific airports... I think Newark or JFK. Source: a DAL pilot I know.

  • Re:

    No, you've really got the facts wrong and backwards. Existing radio altimeters were tested and certified by the FAA at a time when there was a large unused guard band between the frequencies that radio altimeters used and other radio communications. The FCC went ahead and repurposed radio bands for 5G that were adjacent to those used by radio altimeters without doing any ACTUAL testing of existing radio altimeters in use in aircraft. They did SIMULATED testing, and claimed everything would be fine. The

• Come this winter when visibility decreases and pilots don't want to chance flaky ground proximity warnings. Rad Alt is also critical for low visibility helicopter operation. So when they can't land in fog or inclement weather to take your kid to the hospital because some sperglord has to play streaming video.

  • Re: We'll see

    I doubt it. Measuring frequency cross talk and interference is pretty basic stuff. HAM radio operators can do it. There is no story here.

• As a certified private pilot and as a ham operator (extra), I have an opinion on this. Avionics are hugely expensive. Probably because they have to meet all kinds of FAA and FCC regulations. I could not just buy a Baofeng radio or other device and shove it into the sleeve where my King or other radio used to reside. I don't remember the details, but one of my radios was old tube and one was transistor. They both worked, so I was fine with that.

  Now, today, it is different.

• It's almost as if over-air transmissions don't fuck up airplanes...

  • Re:

    If they did then then terrorists could get together a bunch of phones in an airport then activate them all at once during a flight.

    OTOH there IS a type of altimeter that's known to be affected by 5G [google.com].

• OB Disc: I'm an FAA certificated commercial helicopter pilot who flies aircraft with radar altimeters.

  TL;DR The media has conflated so many things that people opining on this are both right and wrong. This article is equally pointless. Details below

  Media misses points:
  1. It's not "an altimeter" issue. Altimeter measure mean sea-level (MSL) altitude using air pressure and are unaffected by any radio waves. Federa Air Regulations require them aboard all powered (engine) civil aircraft. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/t... [ecfr.gov]

  2. It IS a radar altimeter issue. The radar altimeter does regular radio transmissions to time bounces off the ground showing how high above ground level (AGL) the aircraft is. They can be affected by lots of things including newer radio frequency band utilization.

  3. It's been working in Europe with no problems and the FAA and airlines are just fighting it out because they're stupid. No, European frequency bands for the so-called 5G transmissions are different than the ones in the US. Radar altimeter manufacturers know there's a "guard band" of unallocated frequency space so they counted on that and made cheaper low-pass or high-pass filters knowing they had room to play. The allocation of the "5G band" tends to have made that a poor choice in the long term.

  4. There are no unusual reports because the temporary fluctuation of a radar altimeter is normal, is neither an "accident" nor an "incident" and isn't subject to either FAA or NTSB reporting. So drawing conclusions from "it's been a few months and 5G hasn't made any difference on aircraft" is drawing conclusions from zero data. This is nonreportable stuff.

  5. Aircraft do not land themselves. I know lots of media sources like to think they do, but they don't. Instrument landing of civil aircraft always involves a pilot at the decision height (DH) electing to proceed to touch down and land. The radar altimeter does not help that process. Instrument landing systems (ILS) include a lateral (right / left) indicator, called a localizer, and a glide slop indicator (GSI) indicating if you're on the 3deg or 5deg descent to the runway. The radar altimeter COULD be used to land the plane automatically in an emergency and its failure then would be un-good, but for normal ops the pilot at DH sees the runway and gets the aircraft down... or he/she elects to go-around or go-elsewhere.

  Must be all those neurosurgeons doing brain surgeries on their iPhones using 5G that hurts planes. No, 5G isn't anything more than 4G+ or LTE+ ("Long Term Evolution+ which really is nonsense terms like NextGen Air Traffic Control or New-New-Old-Phoenix-Highway.)

  The media has the unique ability to educate, demonstrate, and make us all smarter. Instead they spew out all this entirely inaccurate stuff.
  5G isn't generational revolution over LTE.
  Radar altimeters are not "an altimeter". They don't tell you altitude... just height above ground level.
  Frequencies are different in Europe so their lack of interference means nothing in the US.
  Neither EU nor US flights have to "report" radalt twitchiness so they don't so conclusions from zero data are worth zero.