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You're using the wrong burden of proof here. You're assuming it's safe until proven dangerous, while the FAA is (properly) treating it as dangerous until proven

You're using the wrong burden of proof here. You're assuming it's safe until proven dangerous, while the FAA is (properly) treating it as dangerous until proven safe. Take the recent 737 MAX debacle as an example. Its MCAS hadn't been proven to be dangerous when it went into production, but it turned out that it was. Result: two airplanes fell out of the sky and 346 people died. It's the FAA's job to prevent this sort of thing from happening, and in this case (unlike the 737 case) they're doing that job.

pigbearpig 5y ago
Agreed, very surprised at the cavalier attitude of many of these comments. I'd rather my phone be slower than my plane think it's 300ft higher than it actually is. Aviation isn't the area to be making assumptions that it "should be fine."
theYipster 5y ago
Thank you! This is the most important and most correct comment on this forum today. Truly, it's amazing how many aerospace engineers hang out on HackerNews!\s So many assertions about what is right, what is wrong, and who is to blame. 99% of these assertions reflect a poor understanding of how commercial aviation fundamentally and functionally works. Not only is your comment 100% correct, it also strikes at the heart of the problem. Diplomatically, the issue that exists today is a clash of the very different safety cultures that exist between aviation and telco (and by extension the FAA and the FCC.) Aviation will win, btw. The question, however, is at whose expense. Btw, the root of all this can be traced back work the aviation industry had undertaken to create a standard for wireless safety critical avionics (a system and standard called WAIC.) It was about four years ago that the aviation industry tried to secure additional spectrum, was denied, and thus started researching how to use the existing 4.2-4.4ghz spectrum already dedicated to aviation. It was through this research that the industry discovered the inherent problems with radio altimeters and nearby spectrum interference. The aviation industry petitioned the FCC during the notice of comment period for the C-band spectrum sale, sharing the research and the data which shows 5G interference could be a problem given how it was planned to be deployed in the US. T-Mobile did their own preliminary study in support of the aviation industry's findings, but the rest of the telco industry attacked the research done without providing their own alternative data. The FCC, under Ajit Pai, and with support of the telco's lobbying arm CTIA, then effectively politicized any additional technical assessment or study, leading to today's brouhaha. If you want to blame anyone, blame the FCC and their former chair, who btw, is already a favorite internet punching bag. (Note that T-Mobile is the only carrier that did not purchase the spectrum, although it's not known whether this was due to T-Mobile's own supporting research.)

pigbearpig 5y ago

Agreed, very surprised at the cavalier attitude of many of these comments. I'd rather my phone be slower than my plane think it's 300ft higher than it actually is. Aviation isn't the area to be making assumptions that it "should be fine."

theYipster 5y ago

Thank you! This is the most important and most correct comment on this forum today. Truly, it's amazing how many aerospace engineers hang out on HackerNews!\s So many assertions about what is right, what is wrong, and who is to blame. 99% of these assertions reflect a poor understanding of how commercial aviation fundamentally and functionally works. Not only is your comment 100% correct, it also strikes at the heart of the problem. Diplomatically, the issue that exists today is a clash of the very different safety cultures that exist between aviation and telco (and by extension the FAA and the FCC.) Aviation will win, btw. The question, however, is at whose expense. Btw, the root of all this can be traced back work the aviation industry had undertaken to create a standard for wireless safety critical avionics (a system and standard called WAIC.) It was about four years ago that the aviation industry tried to secure additional spectrum, was denied, and thus started researching how to use the existing 4.2-4.4ghz spectrum already dedicated to aviation. It was through this research that the industry discovered the inherent problems with radio altimeters and nearby spectrum interference. The aviation industry petitioned the FCC during the notice of comment period for the C-band spectrum sale, sharing the research and the data which shows 5G interference could be a problem given how it was planned to be deployed in the US. T-Mobile did their own preliminary study in support of the aviation industry's findings, but the rest of the telco industry attacked the research done without providing their own alternative data. The FCC, under Ajit Pai, and with support of the telco's lobbying arm CTIA, then effectively politicized any additional technical assessment or study, leading to today's brouhaha. If you want to blame anyone, blame the FCC and their former chair, who btw, is already a favorite internet punching bag. (Note that T-Mobile is the only carrier that did not purchase the spectrum, although it's not known whether this was due to T-Mobile's own supporting research.)