Abstract

     The rollout of 5G wireless service has been much anticipated by consumers across the U.S. since it will bring faster data download speeds and expanded service; however, the impact to aviation and air travel are as a major issue and the potential impact to aviation has not been estimated or assessed. This paper fills that gap and provides the first analysis of the potential number of flights impacted by 5G at ten of the busiest airports in the U.S. Using detailed historical weather and flight data in 2019 at 10 large hub airports, we find that nearly 15,700 flight arrivals could be directly impacted annually, at the ten airports considered. The geographical and seasonal impact varies significantly with more flights affected by the potential for 5G interference at airports in Seattle and Dallas Fort-Worth and relatively few flights affected at airports in Phoenix and Las Vegas. A case study examining ten years of data at Chicago O’Hare International, a hub for two major airlines, suggests that over 2,400 flights every year could be impacted by 5G interference. Fortunately, there has been increasing cooperation between the cell phone industry and aviation stakeholders to ensure a safe rollout of 5G C-band; this paper provides a significant contribution by documenting the issues and context for aviation operations.

Introduction

     The rollout of 5G wireless service has been much anticipated by consumers across the U.S. as data download speeds will be increased and service expanded. 5G C-band enables data intensive technology for personal and business use, ranging from entertainment such as video games to critical communications for public services (Pham et al, 2020), and provides more consistent, faster speeds and increased capacity. The communications band or “C” band was originally designated for industrial applications and satellite communications and were repurposed for 5G wireless between 3.7 and 3.98 GHz. C-band is one component of the mid-band frequency between 3.3 and 4.2 GHz. The benefits of the new 5G C-band service have been contraindicated near airports by the aviation industry due to the potential for negative operational and safety impacts. Since the 5G C-band frequencies is very close to the Aeronautical Radionavigation Service (ARS) spectrum (as shown in Fig. 1), there is a potential for signal interference which could potentially disrupt the operation of the radio/radar altimeter equipment on many transport aircraft. This equipment is necessary to conduct certain low visibility procedures when weather conditions do not permit use of standard precision or non-precision procedures. The inability of aircraft to safely perform these procedures could generate flight disruptions throughout the system. This fact was underscored by the acknowledgement that over 100 pilot reports of potential 5G interference have been made in the first few weeks of 5G rollout (Levin and Shields, 2022). Additionally, the U.S. Transportation Secretary noted that these issues will not be fixed by the summer flying season (Reardon, 2022).

Conclusions

     As the U.S. and other countries introduce 5G C-band, the need to understand the potential disruption to air travel is apparent. This paper provides the first estimates of the number of flights that could be potentially impacted at ten of the busiest airports in the U.S. These flights conducting low visibility procedures could be delayed, diverted, or cancelled. The number of flights conducting these low visibility approaches varies across seasons and location. Some airports, such as Seattle-Tacoma International could experience a significant impact to flight operations while others such as Harry Reid International in Las Vegas could be minimally impacted. Dallas Fort-Worth International, which area serves as several major airline hubs and headquarters, experiences numerous low visibility flight operations with the greatest monthly variation. The systemic impact from disruptions out of these ten busy hub airports presents a significant risk to travelers and airline operations. These risks include delays and cancelations as well as their direct and indirect economic costs. Further, to highlight the significant potential impact we determined that Chicago O’Hare International had over 27,000 flights conduct low visibility operations in the decade from 2009 to 2019.

مقاله سال 2016

The airline industry grows rapidly but suffers from intrinsically low-profit margins (Hanlon, 1999; IATA, 2014) and high volatility of returns (Tugores-García, 2012). Koch’s 80/20 principle (1998) suggests that twenty percent of the most profitable customers account for eighty percent of the sales revenue in many businesses. The 80/ 20 principle could be used to explain why companies keenly attempt to identify their most profitable customers, and maintain long term relationships with them through strategic co-branding programs. Examples in the airline industry include airline alliances, celebrity-featuring aircraft livery, celebrity endorsements, co-branded credit cards, and so on.

Despite the terminological similarity, global airline alliances are different from co-branding alliances (Blackett and Boad, 1999), which involves the creation of a new long-term master brand, such as SkyTeam, Oneworld, and Star Alliance. More specifically, cobranding alliances are supported by the endorsement of the participants’ brands in the areas of operations, technical aspects, and marketing activities (Weber, 2003; Wang, 2014). For example, celebrity-featuring aircraft livery promotes the perceived value of the airline with a unique painting style to decorate the aircraft, enabling certain airlines to differentiate its aircraft from its competitors (Wang and Waros, 2015a,b). Additionally, celebrity endorsements attract customers by conveying perceived attractiveness, truthworthiness, and expertise from the celebrity endorsers to the airline (Basusta, 2009; Qantas, 2014; Virgin Atlantic, 2013; Air New Zealand, 2013; Emirates Airline, 2014; Ricki, 2013). Notably, airline co-branded credit cards1 are often linked to the airline’s frequent flyer programs with the intention to expand market share by pushing member-earned miles for eligible spending on the card, eventually providing privileges that extend beyond travel.

Membership cards are designed to offer comprehensive customer service but offer no financial transaction functions (Liu et al., 2012). In contrast, airline co-branded credit cards aretypically co-issued by a commercial bank and an airline, and this type of credit cards could offer unique frequent passenger rewards such as upgrades from coach to business class, free tickets, priority check-ins, baggage allowances, and access to business lounges in certain airports (Martín et al., 2011). Similar to the partnership between airlines and banks, other partners in frequent flyer programs (FFPs) include rental car enterprises and hotel corporations, to less conventional participants, such as food retailers and restaurants. Brand identifiers on credit cards, such as logos and color schemes, allow such cards to be easily identified.

Cabin crew members play an essential role in the development of the airline industry. Their top priority duty is to guard cabin security and ensure the execution of safety regulations. However, limited research has examined cabin crews’ proactive safety related organizational behavior, such as upward safety communication between flight attendants and cabin crew department managers. Previous research regarding cabin crew’s communication related topics mostly focused on in-flight communication among aircrew members (e.g. Brown and Rantz, 2010; Chute and Wiener, 1996; Murphy, 2001). Despite the importance of crew resource management between cockpit and cabin crews, flight attendants’ willingness to conduct upward safety communication to the department managers may provide valuable and irreplaceable observations from the front-line working experience, benefiting greatly on organizations’ overall performance. Hofmann and Morgeson (1999) propose that upward safety communication is negatively related to adverse safety events. As being the liaison among cockpit, cabin and ground while at work, communication has long been.

recognized essential to fight attendants’ performance. Smith et al. (1978) argue that open communication and frequent interactions between employees and managers are important factors that can lower accident rates. Meanwhile, researchers reveal that communication significantly helps employees’ physical safety level of the work site and safety performances (Kines et al., 2010). It is thus expected that the more cabin crew members are willing to conduct such communication as a proactive safety behavior, the better the interactions and the understanding between flight attendants and cabin crew department managers, which may lead to better safety performance.

Voice behavior is regarded an extra-role organizational citizenship behavior, which can be defined as “non-required behavior that emphasizes expression of constructive challenges with an intent to improve rather than merely criticize” (Van Dyne and LePine, 1998, p. 109). Nowhere is the need for voice more crucial than in sets of interdependent individuals who share responsibility for work outcomes (Sundstrom et al., 1990), such as cabin crew members. In the present paper, voice behavior is viewed as safety citizenship behavior, which presents in communicating upward, particularly on safety related topics, from cabin crew to the department managers. Being the frontline operators, flight attendants constantly obtain first-hand information from theirinteractions with passengers and other crew members (Chen and Chen, 2014). The special characteristics of cabin duties, such as being a liaison among diverse groups of people, offer flight attendants exclusive opportunities to experience the practice of airlines safety policies and collect the feedback directly from various channels. Performing voice behavior demonstrates that flight attendants take proactive steps to participate in airlines safety practice. It is thus worth working to identify possible factors which affect such behaviors, and further trying to enhance the positive effects and avoid the negative ones.

In today’s competitive aviation industry, flight attendants are a key input to delivery of exemplary services to passengers and passenger satisfaction. However, they are frequently beset with jetlag, role stress, long night shifts, dysfunctional passenger attitudes and behaviors, and/or burnout (e.g., Karatepe and Vatankhah, 2014; Kim and Back, 2012). Flight attendants do emotion work, are expected to work in teams effectively, and need to develop relationships with their colleagues for better service performance and respond to passenger requests promptly (Fu, 2013; Karatepe and Vatankhah, 2014; Park and Park, 2016; Xanthopoulou et al., 2008). Since such customer-contact employees spend a great deal of time serving passengers, they may ask for an opportunity to be active job crafters or may be in need of job crafting for successful service performance (cf. Bakker, 2010; Weseler and Niessen, 2016). Almost more than three decades ago, Kulik et al. (1987).

underscored the significance of job crafting. They suggested that employees can make changes in their jobs on their own initiative. According to Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001), job crafting is defined as “the physical and cognitive changes individuals make in the task or relational boundaries in their work” (p. 179). Apart from cognitive changes in work tasks and relationships, job crafting may also be considered based on job characteristics (Bakker et al., 2012). According to Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, job characteristics can be classified into two general categories, which are job demands and job resources (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008). Using JD-R theory, job crafting can be defined as the changes employees may make pertaining to job demands and resources (Tims and Bakker, 2010). Increasing structural and social job resources as well as increasing challenging job demands represent job crafting (Bakker and Demerouti, 2016; Tims et al., 2012). Employees may redesign their jobs using job demands and resources and display work engagement that is defined as “a positive, fulfilling, workrelated state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74). They in turn may exhibit desirable outcomes (Bakker et al., 2012). In empirical terms, Van Wingerden et al. (2016) reported that the job demandsresources intervention in the form of improving personal resources and job crafting engendered work engagement and in-role performance. Brenninkmeijer and Hekkert-Koning (2015) found that both increasing structural job resources and increasing social job resources positively influenced work engagement.

Job crafting is a critical strategy for both managerial and nonmanagerial employees because the ones who craft their jobs “… are about changing the job in order to experience enhanced meaning of it” (Bakker, 2010, p. 239). Flight attendants may seek structural job resources to learn new things. For example, they may be in need of more autonomy and knowledge about the job. Theymay seek social job resources. Specifically, they may ask for support from their coworkers and pursers as well as feedback concerning their current job performance. They may also seek and accept more responsibility for personal growth and achievement (increasing challenging job demands). The ones who have the opportunity to make changes in their jobs are more engaged in their work, remain with the organization, and perform better at work (cf. Bakker, 2010; Bakker et al., 2012).

Amid growing concerns about climate change, the airline industry’s carbon emissions have gained increasing attention. The industry’s CO2 contribution is not very large in percentage terms, accounting for around 2.5% of total CO2 emissions as of 2006 (Kwan and Rutherford, 2015), but the impact per kilogram of its highaltitude emissions on climate change is about double that of ground-level emissions, as explained by Lee et al. (2004). Recognizing the importance of airline emissions, the European Union in 2012 formulated a controversial plan to require all airlines serving EU airports to acquire emissions allowances under its emissions trading system (ETS). But in the face of substantial opposition, this plan was never fully implemented, with the required charges currently limited to Europe’s own airlines (see Albers et al., 2009, and Scheelhasse and Grimme, 2007). Following on the EU’s efforts, the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization in 2016 proposed two emission-reduction programs with an international scope. The first is an explicit fuel efficiency standard for new aircraft, intended to take effect in 2028 (Mouawad and Davenport, 2016). Whileenvironmentalists were disappointed by this plan, which would affect airline emissions only gradually (Mooney, 2016), the ICAO subsequently announced a carbon-offset program, titled Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). Under this program, airlines are required to purchase carbon offsets (sold by other entities undertaking carbon-reduction activities) to compensate for increases in their carbon emissions beyond a 2020 baseline. Although structured differently, this plan is equivalent to requiring the purchase of allowances under an ETSstyle system.1

Given the new focus on airline emissions, it is important to gain a better understanding of the link between the emissions volumes of individual airlines and the characteristics of their fleets and flight operations. Since emissions are approximately proportional to fuel consumption, this link can be studied by exploring the connection between an airline’s total fuel usage and its characteristics. The present paper carries out such an exploration. Using annual data on individual US airlines over the 1995e2015 period, the paper presents regression results relating an airline’s total fuel usage to seven variables: the available ton miles of capacity (passengers plus freight and mail) provided by the airline; the average seat capacity of its aircraft, average stagelength (flight distance); average load factor (measured by weight); the average vintage (construction year) of its aircraft; the percentage of the airline’s flights that are delayed; and the average annual fuel price. The regression model containing these variables is generated from a theoretical framework, which has elements in common with the earlier model of Brueckner and Zhang (2010). 2

ang (2010). 2 The results give answers to the following questions: How would an airline’s fuel usage (and thus emissions) respond to modernization of its fleet? To a shift to longer flights? To a reduction in flight delays? To fuller planes? In addition, the estimated effect of the fuel price on fuel usage captures the impact of greater fuel-conservation effort, holding fixed the characteristics of the airline’s fleet and route structure. While the fuel price effect thus only captures shortrun usage adjustments, its magnitude can be used to predict the short-run impact of airline emission charges, an exercise that is carried out in the paper.