Air India restricts flights with the US over fears of 5G rollout

New Delhi, Jan. 19 (EFE). – Air India on Wednesday announced the restriction of flights to the United States due to the deployment of 5G mobile network services in that country, which raised concerns about the potential for new signals to interfere with aircraft systems.

“Due to the rollout of 5G connections in the US, our operations from India have been restricted/reviewed with aircraft type changes from January 19, 2022,” the Indian company said on Twitter.

Air India announced the cancellation of four flights on Wednesday to New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Newark.

The announcement of the Indian airline is added to the announcement of Emirates Airlines, which announced yesterday the suspension of flights to nine cities until further notice.

On Monday, major US airlines asked the US government to prevent the transmission of 5G signals in a radius of 3.2 kilometers around airport runways, before activating this technology tomorrow.

The companies have warned that new frequency bands from 3.7 to 3.8 gigahertz (GHz), the so-called C-band spectrum, which will give networks a greater geographical range and faster signals, could cause the safety of many aircraft to become “unusable”.

Already in early January, the US government had to ask two operators (AT&T and Verizon) to extend network activation after concerns expressed by US Boeing and its main competitor, European Airbus, the world’s largest aircraft maker. EFE

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