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Comment by Ftuuky | Hacker News Reader

Almost don't want to fly on Boeings ever again...

""5G interference could adversely affect the ability of aircraft to safely operate," said the bosses of Boeing and Airbus Americas, Dave Calhoun and Jeffrey Knittel, in a joint letter to US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

""Airbus and Boeing have been working with other aviation industry stakeholders in the US to understand potential 5G interference with radio altimeters," Airbus said in a statement."

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59737194

The article body and headline are (of course) at odds IMO. The headline is very much "doomscroll" material while the article points out that interference could basically manifest as having to rely on secondary systems and protocols to land. If I'm missing something then happy to be corrected :D

Airline accidents almost never have a single cause. It requires multiple failures to align before you have disaster. Malfunctioning radio altimeters could be one of those factors.

That said, this is Boeing's fault. They need to clean up their act ASAP, and it seems like they've been banking on the FCC covering up their mess and are now running around with their hair on fire.

A reasonable stopgap may be to simply not allow 5G towers to use the frequencies ranges in question within some radius of an airport (20 miles?) for a few years until Boeing fixes the problem.

A 20 mile radius of any airport likely covers a significant portion (60-70%) of all urban/suburban population. They might as well just give up on that spectrum at that point.

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