The Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has announced that travel plans could face delays this summer due to 5G, the Wall Street Journal reports. This would be due to an upcoming deadline on July 1 requiring airlines to retrofit their crafts to prevent 5G interference.
“There’s a real risk of delays or cancellations,” Buttigieg said in an interview. “This represents one of the biggest—probably the biggest—foreseeable problem affecting performance this summer.”
5G connectivity has swept the nation since 2019. The first iPhone to support 5G connection was the iPhone 12, released in 2020. Leaps and bounds faster than 4G, 5G requires stronger signals and more towers to get top connection speeds.
Aircrafts are particularly susceptible to cell signal towers, which partly explains the ban on cellular connectivity for passengers during flights. If not properly hardened, navigational instruments could be confused, causing aircraft safety. Buttigieg said that a whole 80% of domestic and 65% of international flights will be certified.
The July 1 2023 deadline was already pushed back from an earlier January 2022 goal. International airlines have been able to focus on hardening their navigation instruments on aircrafts bound for America. Supply chain issues have plagued the airline industry, mostly due to
United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and American Airlines all stated that their upgrades were either already completed, or will be by the deadline. Delta, however, announced that it will not have upgraded 190 of its crafts from a fleet of 900. The airline stated that it will use those aircrafts on routes where weather was more permitting while it finishes these upgrades.
