Chaos in the skies averted — for now — as 5G switches on

Wednesday's debut of new 5G wireless arrived with some isolated diversions or delays of air traffic — but so far, no signs of the mass chaos that the telecom and airline industries had sought to avoid with an 11th-hour deal.

The single largest disruptions so far appears to involve international airlines, a handful of which had canceled some or even all of their flights to the U.S. starting Tuesday amid fears that the 5G rollout would be too disruptive. Among domestic flights, a handful of large cargo jets that were already midair when 5G went into effect overnight ended up diverting to another airport, according to the plane-tracking website FlightRadar24.

And in one instance, a United Airlines flight from Denver to Houston late Tuesday evening reported a three-hour delay that the airline attributed to the 5G rollout. In a notice on its website, United exhorted customers angry about the hours-long delay to complain to the Federal Communications Commission and directed them to the agency's website. The plane eventually landed in Houston.

The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement Wednesday, United said so far delays had been minimal. It has also updated its notice about the delayed flight to Houston; though it still attributes the delay to 5G, it no longer directs people to complain to the FCC. Instead, it provides a link to a Federal Aviation Administration informational page about 5G. Rich Young, a spokesperson for Verizon, noted that Denver isn't one of the airports subject to 5G and said United should "get its facts straight."

After a bruising months-long fight over whether new 5G wireless services enabled overnight would disrupt aircraft safety equipment, on Tuesday AT&T and Verizon agreed to limit their 5G signals near key airports. That appeared to head off the mass cancellations that the airlines and the Department of Transportation had warned could result when Verizon and AT&T turned on their new 5G service.

On Wednesday, Airlines for America, the trade group for most U.S. airlines, praised the Biden administration for its "action to avert catastrophic disruption."

"While there is still work to be done by all stakeholders, this is an important step toward achieving a permanent solution and allowing the U.S. to continue leading the world in aviation safety while also expanding our nation’s 5G network," the group said.

Still, questions remain unanswered about how the wireless signals could affect air travel, an issue the Federal Aviation Administration was seeking to address in detailed fashion for specific airports and models of planes. On Wednesday, the FAA issued more guidance for additional planes and conditions, upping coverage of the U.S. fleet from about 45 percent to about 62 percent.

The new 5G technology has the potential to interfere with aircraft altimeters — devices that measure how high a plane is off the ground — among other interconnected avionics and equipment, potentially making it dangerous for aircraft to land in poor weather conditions or low cloud cover during which pilots depend on instrumentation for landing.

On Sunday, the FAA issued a directive that provides instructions for how certain models of Boeing and Airbus planes that carry a certain type of altimeter can safely land in areas where 5G is enabled — but that only represents about 45 percent of the U.S. commercial fleet, the agency said. The remainder of the fleet does not yet have a way of landing safely in 5G-enabled areas, though the FAA is working on additional workarounds.

Boeing 777s and 787s, which are most heavily used internationally, are notably not part of the group of plane types that the FAA included in its previously approved instructions. The agency issued a separate directive for pilots operating the Boeing 787 last week; in some areas where 5G is live, the interference could delay the control of the aircraft’s thrust reversers upon landing and therefore could “prevent an aircraft from stopping on the runway.” This inordinately impacts international airlines, as the 777 and 787 is a preferred model for long-haul flights.

On Wednesday, Japan Airlines said it will restart flights bound stateside after it said it had "received confirmation from the FAA that there is no longer a problem with the operation of the Boeing 777."

Airlines and airports for months have warned that absent further buffers, the 5G rollout would force chaos in the skies over the disruption, with increased delays, cancellations and diversions impacting thousands of customers and cargo shipments. The president of Emirates, one of the foreign airlines that canceled its flights over the issue, on Wednesday called the operational snafu "one of the most delinquent, utterly irresponsible ... I've seen in my aviation career."

"We are aware that everybody is trying to get 5g rolled out," Emirates president Tim Clark told CNN. "We were not aware that the power of the antennas in the United States of being doubled compared to what's going on elsewhere. Somebody should have told them a long time ago, that it would compromise safety of operation of aircraft."