THE FAA AND THE FCC BOTH NEGLECT THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES TO AVOID 5G INTERFERENCE WITH AIRCRAFT SAFETY SYSTEMS

The FAA, the agency of Government responsible to ensure aviation safety has been caught flat-footed once again by failing to ensure that frequencies used by 5 G networks do not interfere with aircraft avionics like radar altimeters that provide critical altitude information to aircraft crews performing instrument approaches to airports.

The FAA and FCC had years to work with industry and the authority to tell industry to use slightly different frequencies for their 5G or reduce frequency strength near airports to avoid this. But naturally the Gov’ment being the Gov’ment, it did nothing.

The FAA just issued Airworthiness Directives to airlines warning that interference could occur which is a dangerous condition. The FCC has done nothing about it, the FAA has done nothing about it, and they both have eroded aviation safety by their collective inaction, ineptitude and ignorance.

Sophisticated modern airplanes use radar altimeters to perform Instrument Landing System approaches. The radar altimeter tells the flight crews how high they are above the ground starting at 2500 feet going all the way down to 10 feet above the surface. The safety benefit is enormous but in really bad weather operating radar altimeters are FAA required for Category II Instrument approaches.

So, because it was asleep at the switch the potential exists for a dangerous condition to exist in bad weather so somebody like your youngster can play with their cell phones all day instead of interacting like a human being with their friends and parents.

Maybe the FCC should ban 5 G from cell phones instead of causing interference that may endanger tens of millions of airplane passengers.

Now the good news is that in other countries where 5G has been used for a year or more no airplane interference has been documented. But we have to take seriously the safety warning and assume that while it is only in the imaginary, Illusory and figment of one’s doomsday scenario, and may never materialize, it is nonetheless unforgiveable, but not surprising, that the FAA and FCC who apparently don’t speak to each other on their 5G phones much, didn’t fix this before creating a crisis.

Maybe the FAA was just too busy explaining its way out of why it certified an airliner and missed critical flight system flaws that killed 346 innocent people. Or perhaps it was hiding documents so FAA employees wouldn’t be jailed for looking the other way purposely.

The system is corrupt, inept, dangerous and broken.

Arthur Alan Wolk

December 23^rd, 2021.

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