Airlines Cancel Some Flights Citing Launch of AT&T, Verizon 5G Signals

Emirates Airline said it would suspend flights to nine U.S. cities.

Japan Airlines Co.

9201 -0.93%

and

All Nippon Airways Co.

ALNPY -1.55%

said Boeing had advised them not to operate the 777 to the U.S. in light of 5G deployment. Air India also announced the cancellation of some U.S.-bound flights operated by 777 jets.

”At our sole discretion we have voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways,” an AT&T spokeswoman said in a statement. “We are launching our advanced 5G services everywhere else as planned.”

Verizon followed AT&T’s move later Tuesday and committed to voluntarily limit its 5G network around airports. The carrier said its Wednesday 5G launch will still cover more than 90 million Americans.

The cellphone carriers’ next-generation wireless upgrades have sat in limbo in recent months after the Federal Aviation Administration asked them to pause their 5G rollouts. The aerospace regulator said the frequencies AT&T and Verizon planned to use to carry the new 5G signals might confuse radar altimeters, which aircraft depend on to measure height off the ground.

Telecom-industry executives have disputed those claims and said that the service in dispute, which covers a set of frequencies known as the C-band, already operates around similar airwaves in dozens of other countries.

Aviation-industry officials said without an agreement, they could face limits on flying certain aircraft types, including being effectively unable to use Boeing 777 jets that fly internationally. Boeing declined to comment.

The telecom and aviation industries seemed on the brink of a truce earlier this month after cellphone carriers agreed to completely pause the launch of their new 5G services until Jan. 19. The timeout was designed to give the Federal Aviation Administration more time to whittle down its safety restrictions to specific aircraft and airports, which would lessen the disruption they caused to flight plans.

But the FAA in recent days informed airlines that many airports expected to get some relief from the safety restrictions would still face sharp limits on landings in harsh weather. Top passenger and cargo airline executives on Monday wrote Biden administration officials with another delay request, warning that the federal safety precautions could ground swaths of their fleets without more protection from 5G signals.

AT&T and Verizon said they still plan to launch their high-speed network links nationwide Wednesday but will refrain from turning on signals within 2 miles of airport runways. Spokespeople for the companies declined to say how long the new wireless buffers around airports will last. They had previously agreed to dim the power of their 5G signals around runways for six months.

The partial launch has a deeper effect on Verizon, which is using the 5G frequencies in a larger number of locations. The 2-mile quiet zones will limit several hundred Verizon cell stations and about 10 AT&T stations, according to people familiar with the matter.

T-Mobile US Inc.

isn’t expected to activate its C-band services until late 2023.

The new 5G limits announced Tuesday will buy regulators more time but stop short of settling the issue. White House press secretary

Jen Psaki

said in a Tuesday press briefing that U.S. aviation and telecom regulators were working with industry representatives to develop a solution. “We certainly understand what’s at stake for both industries,” she said, “But certainly, minimizing flight disruptions, ensuring safety in travel is a top priority.”

Write to Drew FitzGerald at [email protected]