Emirates has cancelled most service to the United States, blaming 5G, even as AT&T and Verizon have indicated they will leave a substantial buffer around major U.S. airports.
Emirates Cancels Flights To USA, Blames 5G Rollout
Emirates has cancelled the majority of its flights to the United States tomorrow and zeroed out inventory on future flights through the end of the month. A memo to employees blames the flight cancellations on the rollout of 5G in the USA tomorrow:
Due to operational concerns associated with the planned deployment of 5G mobile network services in the US at certain airports, Emirates will be suspending flights to the following US destinations from 19 January 2022 until further notice:
Boston (BOS), Chicago (ORD), Dallas Fort Worth (DFW), Houston (IAH), Miami (MIA), Newark (EWR), Orlando (MCO), San Francisco (SFO) and Seattle (SEA).
Customers holding tickets with the final destination to any of the above will not be accepted at the point of origin.
Emirates flights to New York JFK, Los Angeles (LAX) and Washington DC (IAD) continue to operate as scheduled.
As I laid out earlier today, the entire 5G debacle marks a colossal failing on the part of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which had two years to prepare for 5G rollout and chose to procrastinate instead. Its lack of action on this issue is shameful and, along with its criminal lack of oversight on the Boeing 737 MAX, demonstrates a growing credibility gap for what has long been one of the most admired agencies in the world.
> Read More: Airlines Actually Fear FAA, Not 5G
It is not clear if U.S. or other foreign airlines will follow Emirates, especially after AT&T and Verizon announced that they would voluntarily suspend turning on 5G signals around major U.S. airports.
AT&T said:
“At our sole discretion, we have voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways as we continue to work with the aviation industry and the FAA to provide further information about our 5G deployment, since they have not utilized the two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment.
“We are frustrated by the FAA’s inability to do what nearly 40 countries have done, which is to safely deploy 5G technology without disrupting aviation services, and we urge it do so in a timely manner.
“We are launching our advanced 5G services everywhere else as planned with the temporary exception of this limited number of towers.”
Verizon said:
“We have voluntarily decided to limit our 5G network around airports.
“The FAA and our nation’s airlines have not been able to fully resolve navigating 5G around airports, despite it being safe and fully operational in more than 40 other countries.”
CONCLUSION
Emirates has taken the surprising move of cancelling most of its flights to the United States, blaming uncertainty over 5G rollout. Concurrently, both AT&T and Verizon have announced a temporary delay in the rollout around U.S. airports, bowing to pressure to avoid threatened airline service disruptions.
This is a developing story.
UPDATE: Air India, ANA, and JAL have also cancelled flights to the USA, blaming 5G.
(image: Emirates // H/T: One Mile At A Time)
This is absolute NOT the fault of the FAA. Your placing blame on them is ridiculously misplaced. The issue is the FCC allowing carte blanche to phone carriers to use spectrum that can interfere with radar altimeters, and doing so over the objections of the airlines and the FAA. ATT and Verizon can easily forgo using those bands around airports, which is what is done in other countries, or the FCC can tell them they don’t have a choice and ban the use of those bands around airports. The FAA is powerless to regulate them, so all they can do is tell airlines to upgrade their equipment and NOTAM CAT II and III approaches around airports where the spectrum is being abused.
As I said in the other thread, your outrage is what is totally misplaced.
Your comment is based upon a false premise that the 5G spectrum interferes with radar altimeters. There is no evidence of this and the FAA has had months to run its own tests to verify this. It was only when AT&T and Verizon announced a two-week delay that FAA finally exempted many modern altimeters from its cautious approach. It had years to prepare for this – granting mobile carriers use of additional spectrum did not come overnight.
Certainly it would have been better to see more collaboration between the FAA and FCC, but Verizon and AT&T have already taken a very cautious approach and a perpetual delay over unfounded fears is neither reasonable nor wise public policy.
The FCC is to blame. So is the FAA. Stop defending the FAA.
I blame FAA. Shame to see agency’s credibility sink even lower. Foreign airlines cancel flights in interest of safety. And US airlines….crickets. US airlines are essentially blaming telecom providers for providing better technology while US airlines actively degrade their product. perfecting reheated pasta ain’t that hard. Looking at you UA. What happened to this country?
Well, that’s one way to stomp competition from foreign carriers with far superior product offerings. Well played.
Emirates is also overreacting.
Isn’t the current state of cellular service good enough. Do we really need 5G?
We absolutely need 5G. Many folks don’t realize the increasing reliance on mobile data, over that at home and in businesses through Wi-Fi and cables. That said, the FCC can easily fix this by telling ATT and Verizon where they can use these bands, but they refuse to.
We certainly agree on our need for 5G. It’s a very welcome upgrade.
I am far from an expert in telecoms, but I do know quite a few people who are and they all seem to agree that 5G probably won’t be a life-changing experience for individual consumers using their mobile phones but at the same time it’s absolutely critical for applications such as the ‘Internet of Things’ and infrastructure for ‘smart cities’.
This is crazy. Perhaps Emirates should focus more on their pilot training and safety culture than this ludicrous response. I am thinking wag the dog here to take attention off it’s recent safety issues and to say, “See, we care about safety as a priority.”
Let’s hope they come to their senses as I have bookings in a few weeks and will be livid if I lose my F redemption in the new suites over something as completely stupid as this. Two years…the airlines, FCC, FAA all had TWO YEARS to figure this out. Meanwhile 40 other countries are running new 5G just fine.
Can’t believe how this has escalated….
Nothing to worry about. Brandon will solve it.
Perhaps he can be like Trump and ban laptops in the cabin of ME airlines. That worked well, lol.
Well, Brandon is now working to improve his Solitaire skills since that is all he will do after November.
Who is Brandon?
Emirates canceling flights is because of systemic racism. Brandon better get on it. Maybe Machin and Sinema will finally agree.
Going with vicious childish nicknames drives away moderate people who might otherwise agree with you. This isn’t elementary school and frankly you’re better than this.
I agree. I love you Santastico, but why the Brandon references every day? It’s President Biden. We would all do well to respect the office, even if we don’t respect the occupant.
@Matthew: he deserves the same respect the former president received on your blog and everywhere else. The only thing they didn’t call him when he was in the office was President Trump. In respect to you and not to the current president I will refrain to refer to him here if that is what you want.
I’m not going to censor you if you call him Brandon, but I just don’t think it is helpful. And while I disagreed with many of Trump’s policies (as I do with many of Biden’s) I don’t recall ever attacking him with derogatory nicknames.
@Matthew: it is your blog and I have a lot of respect for you. Even not censoring me, I won’t refer to him anymore. I never said you referred to the previous president by derogatory names but many did including in your blog. And I find funny that now they are not OK when people give nicknames to their beloved president.
Cargo Cult/Accura under a different name?
What happens in other countries ? It’s not as if the USA is the only place with 5G
The bandwidth used for 5G in the US is adjacent to the ones used for altimeters that are so critical in the low-visibility approaches at airports. Plus Europe left buffers airports. Yea
Oh, I thought it’s because 5G causes the rona.
(I know, outdated mid 2020 joke but I can’t help it)
This appears to be an issue with the specific radar altimeters used on the 777. JAL, ANA and Air India have all cancelled their 777 flights into the US too. I think you will find that the flights EK continues to fly are all operated by the A380 which like other Airbus, 737, 757, 767 and most 787 variants is unaffected by this issue.
This is a classic case of commercial interests trumping common sense and the lack of a timely intervention on the part of the FCC and FAA to work together to head this off. This problem does not happen in Europe because their 5G signals are 40% of the power levels of T and VZ and the 5G buffer zones agreed to near airports are 4x that in the US.
While this is second hand, I heard the IAD flight is operating. Not sure if they switched to an A380 but the schedule through March is a 777. Will be interesting to see. If they do switch to an A380 it would be more to what you are speculating on.
BA just cancelled a lot of US 777 flights and swapped 3 777 routes to 787 and A350 aircraft. This would confirm the problem.
Just looked at EK and Dulles. Still booking flights this weekend on a 777. Of course, they can swap quickly, but at this point still shows. And why the 777? How is that so different from the 787 in this regard? It’s really curious. And why would JAL not do the same given the number of 787’s they fly already to the U.S.
“Boeing has announced flight restrictions on all airlines operating the Boeing 777 aircraft, and we have cancelled or changed the aircraft for some flights to/from the U.S. based on the announcement by Boeing,” This from ANA.
So it appears to be a yes, specific to the 777.
Yeah, still no excuse for the telecoms companies and the FCC not copying exactly what they did in Europe and Asia to handle this specific issue. I don’t even get it. Would turning down the signal strength of 5G towers near airports really be that huge a hit to profits?
What’s confusing is it was announced a few hours ago that they actually will block 5G around major airports. So, why this response still?
All these cancelations are ultra long haul routes. They must not have had to cancel these before the announcements from T and VZ given how long the flights are.
Emirates pilots need as few complications as possible lately.
After your recent stories on this airlines near disasters, is it safe to assume American skies and airports are safer if Emirates refuses to fly here?
Who will hold the FAA to account?
My personal belief is that the finger pointing is plenty to go around. That’s part of the problem. No one wants to find a solution, just blame the other.