Duckworth Admonishes 'Seat-of-the-Pants' FAA-FCC C-Band Coordination
Senate Commerce Aviation Subcommittee Chair Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., criticized the FAA and FCC during a Wednesday hearing about their coordinated work to prevent commercial 5G operations on the C band from interfering with airplanes’ radio altimeters. Duckworth cited a push last week by Airlines for America for the FAA to delay until June 2024 its proposed deadline for passenger and cargo aircraft in the U.S. to have C-band-tolerant radio altimeters or install approved filters. The FAA last month proposed an early 2024 deadline for the tech upgrades (see 2301100060).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
“While a four-month delay” of the tech upgrades “may not be a huge disruption, it is a reminder that this process has been and remains a seat-of-the-pants operation,” Duckworth said. “Had the FAA and FCC better cooperated during the development of 5G, wireless customers would have benefited from a smooth, predictable rollout of this new tech without risks to air” passengers. “Instead, we were treated to delays, negotiations and uncertainty, all because the FAA and the FCC failed to meaningfully collaborate with each other early and often over the years,” she said.
“We should never have reached a situation where the FAA had to seriously consider halting flights at certain airports because it could not rule out the risk of 5G interference causing a crash, even if such a risk was low,” Duckworth told acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen. The C-band fracas that culminated in January 2022 (see 2201040070) got significant scrutiny from the Senate Commerce Committee, House Transportation Committee and other lawmakers. Duckworth said Wednesday she will seek additional information from the FAA on whether it’s getting “all the technical information it needs” from the FCC and wireless carriers to ensure 5G doesn’t interfere with aviation safety and that all parties are effectively coordinating.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., also pressed Nolen on the FAA’s coordination with the FCC, saying she doesn’t want another situation to develop where there’s a run-up “against another deadline” for improving interference mitigation “and then everything seems to break down.”
FAA is “working very closely with” the FCC, NTIA and industry stakeholders “on all things 5G,” Nolen told Capito. There’s a “regular cadence of meetings with the FCC on this” and “we are in a position where we have better alignment, and we’ve got an absolute sense of transparency going on there.”