Air India, Dubai’s Emirates, and Japan’s All Nippon Airways suspended some flights to the United States on Tuesday amid 5G wireless deployment plan set to start on Wednesday. Some US-bound flights were either cancelled or rerouted, according to the airlines.
The move comes due to operational concerns associated with the planned deployment of 5G mobile network services in the US.
Air India in a tweet said due to deployment of 5G communications in the United States, its operations to the US from India stand curtailed/revised with change in aircraft type from January 19, 2022.
The airline said it will not be able to operate the following flights of January 19 2022: AI101/102 DEL/JFK/DEL AI173/174 DEL/SFO/DEL AI127/126 DEL/ORD/DEL AI191/144 BOM/EWR/BOM.
Air India cancelled all their flight operations from India to the United States, which used the Boeing 777 aircraft. At the same time, they went ahead with the flight to Washington DC, which is operated with a Boeing 787 aircraft. At present, all inventory for these flights appears to be depleted until January 31, 2022.
Meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon Communications Tuesday agreed to temporarily defer turning on some wireless towers near key airports to avert disruption to US flights.
Both the companies said they will launch new C-Band 5G wireless service on Wednesday but agreed to delay some deployment near airports.