FAA giving airlines another year to fix altimeters that can’t handle 5G signals
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Daniel Garrido)
The Federal Aviation Administration will give airlines another year to fix or replace airplane altimeters that can't filter out cellular transmissions from outside their allotted frequencies. In a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) released today, the FAA proposed a deadline of February 1, 2024, to replace or retrofit faulty altimeters, which are used by airplanes to measure altitude.
Out of 7,993 airplanes on the US registry, the FAA said it "estimates that approximately 180 airplanes would require radio altimeter replacement and 820 airplanes would require the addition of radio altimeter filters to comply with the proposed modification requirement." The total estimated cost of compliance is $26 million.
The requirement could finally end a dispute between the aviation and wireless industries, which has prevented AT&T and Verizon from fully deploying 5G on the C-Band spectrum licenses the wireless carriers purchased for a combined $69 billion. Airplane altimeters rely on a spectrum from 4.2 GHz to 4.4 GHz, but some cannot filter out 5G transmissions from the carriers' spectrum in the 3.7-3.98 GHz range.