NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Light transport aircraft pilot reported radio altimeter malfunction due to possible 5G interference while on approach to land.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
We picked up our airplane in ZZZ and it had been written up previously for radio altimeter giving off spurious false call outs. It was signed off as unable to duplicate and signed off. We flew the airplane and ended up in ZZZ1 with no issues. Next day flew to BJC. As we were descending into a visual to land on runway 31R. Descending through 3000 feet AGL to land, started to get random continuous 500 feet callouts over and over. As we were on a 4 mile final fully configured, we got cut off by VFR traffic and got a TA so we had to climb to avoid traffic. Tower told us to go around and climb to 8000 and enter right traffic with a turn over the airport. When we brought the gear up, we started getting continuous callouts of too low, gear. The gear were up but the UP indications were an amber color I believe flashing. It was hard to tell if we had a gear up failure which is not uncommon in this airplane when an unlock fails. Between the constant calls from ATC, dodging VFR traffic and entering pattern, and the too low gear call out, we were very distracted. We ended up putting the gear back down because I couldn't take the continuous callouts with the work load. When we landed, we wrote the radio altimeter again. However, Maintenance Control inquired with the last write up with no fault found, maybe it was 5G interference. However, we deferred it anyways. I did report this to tower after we landed and the controller said he would report it to his supervisor. I asked if this has been reported before. The tower controller said he has been working there 5 years and was unaware of anyone reporting 5G interference. If this is indeed found to be 5G, this is a real problem as a go-around and having this too low gear continuous callouts and UP indications turning amber is way too distracting. We were very much task saturated and with an early show the last 2 days, fatigue added to this. I would not have wanted to be with a relatively low time pilot in this situation. Hopefully this was a component issue and not a 5G issue. The 500 foot call outs you can handle, but doing a go-around in a high traffic environment dodging airplanes and taking ATC instructions with the too low gear call is too much to handle.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Aircraft Equipment Problem
- Conflict
- Deviation - Altitude
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Aircraft · ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings
- Primary Problem
- Aircraft
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.