The Radio Technical Committee for Aeronautics (RTCA) is warning that a plan to allow 5G cell signals in radio spectrum adjacent to the frequencies used by radio altimeters could threaten flight safety. The private, not-for-profit organization has submitted a technical study to the Federal Communications Commission saying that 5G signals, including those coming from cellphones aboard aircraft, can interrupt radio altimeter operations, causing a cascading series of errors in aircraft flight control systems. “The results presented in this report reveal a major risk that 5G telecommunications systems in the 3.7–3.98 GHz band will cause harmful interference to radar altimeters on all types of civil aircraft—including commercial transport airplanes; business, regional, and general aviation airplanes; and both transport and general aviation helicopters,” RTCA says in its executive summary of the data it compiled. “The results of the study performed clearly indicate that this risk is widespread and has the potential for broad impacts to aviation operations in the United States, including the possibility of catastrophic failures leading to multiple fatalities, in the absence of appropriate mitigations.”
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/new-5g-plan-could-jam-radar-altimeters