By Dominic Gates / The Seattle Times
EVERETT — Relieving the worries of passengers scheduled to fly on Alaska Air flights through Paine Field in Everett, there should be no further flight cancellations caused by the deployment of 5G cell service.
The Federal Aviation Administration this weekend cleared the one aircraft used there for commercial flights as safe to land free of 5G signal interference.
Unlike the larger planes built by Airbus and Boeing, the Embraer E175 regional jet that Alaska uses for those flights had not received the all-clear from the FAA regarding possible interference from the 5G signals with cockpit instruments.
That led to dozens of flight cancellations last week when fog shrouded the airport and pilots could not rely on their instruments to tell them their height above the ground.
The new, more powerful 5G radio signals turned on by Verizon and AT&T at cell towers around the country can potentially interfere with an instrument called an altimeter critical to airplane safety while landing in low-visibility conditions.
The FAA has been conducting an airplane-by-airplane and airport-by-airport analysis and cleared many aircraft to fly in low visibility conditions, depending on what model of altimeter was installed on each aircraft and also how close the cell towers at each airport were to the runways.
The FAA said Monday that it “approved the E175 over the weekend for low-visibility approaches to Paine Field.”
Alaska Air officials said late Monday that they had just received the good news.
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