IATA Urges Governments to Work with Aviation for Safe 5G Rollout

Chinedu Eze

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has urged governments to work closely with the aviation industry to ensure that aviation and incumbent aviation safety systems can safely co-exist with new 5G services.

The global said while it recognised the economic importance of making spectrum available to support next generation commercial wireless telecommunications, maintaining current levels of safety of passengers, flight crews, and aircraft must continue to be one of governments’ highest priorities.

The call came at the just ended 78th IATA Annual General Meeting in Doha, Qatar.

“We must not repeat the recent experience in the United States, where the rollout of C-band spectrum 5G services created enormous disruption to aviation, owing to the potential risk of interference with radio altimeters that are critical to aircraft landing and safety systems. In fact, many countries have successfully managed to facilitate the requirements of 5G service providers, while including necessary mitigations to preserve aviation safety and uninterrupted services. These include, for example, Brazil, Canada, France and Thailand,” said IATA’s Director General, Willie Walsh.

The global body urged that before deciding on any spectrum allocations or conducting spectrum auctions, governments must ensure close coordination and mutual understandings between national spectrum and aviation safety regulators so that each frequency allocation/assignment is comprehensively studied and is proven not to adversely impact aviation safety and efficiency.

Robust testing in coordination with aviation subject matter experts is critically important in providing necessary information. 

Measures that have already been used by some governments include:

Ensure thorough testing, sufficient spectrum separation between 5G C-band deployments and 4.2-4.4 GHz frequency band used by existing radio altimeters 

Clearly codify and enforce the maximum power limit for 5G C-band transmission and downward tilting of 5G antennae particularly in the vicinity of flightpaths

Establishment of sufficient 5G C-band prohibition and precautionary zones around airports