An
operating mode of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it took
the steps after receiving details from the telecommunications companies about
the location of wireless transmitters.
The FAA's move will let the companies activate 5G cell
towers closer to airports without hindering the ability of planes to land
during poor weather.
Verizon and AT&T declined to comment. Nick Ludlum, a
spokesman for the telecommunications trade group CTIA, called it a “positive
development that highlights the considerable progress the wireless industry,
aviation industry, FAA and FCC are making to ensure robust 5G service and safe
flights.”
The trade group Airlines for America issued a similar
statement. Spokesman Carter Yang added that all sides are working on “a more
efficient permanent solution” that will avoid disrupting air traffic as more 5G
towers are activated.
Aviation groups and the FAA had warned that the companies'
5G service, which uses part of the radio spectrum called C-Band, was too close
to the spectrum range used by instruments that measure the height of planes
above the ground — crucial information for landing in low visibility.
Verizon and AT&T, which spent billions to build 5G
networks, disputed the FAA's conclusions. But they twice agreed to delay
launching new 5G and temporarily delayed it around many airports even as they
began offering the service in many US cities on January 19.
Since the dispute came to a head earlier this month, the FAA
has cleared most types of airline planes — 90 percent of the US fleet — to
operate around 5G signals, saying that their height-measuring devices, called
radio altimeters, are safe from radio interference.
Dire predictions of thousands of cancelled flights did not
come true, but dozens of flights have been grounded by 5G concerns, including
US-bound international flights last week and some domestic flights this week at
Paine Field near Seattle. Some small airline planes, notably a group of Embraer
regional jets, have not been cleared.
“It's too early to declare victory,” Faye Malarkey Black,
president of the Regional Airline Association, said earlier this week. “This is
not fixed. We're not fixed.”
Regional airlines — smaller companies that operate flights
under contract with large airlines — faced limitations on a large chunk of
their fleets during poor weather, Black said.