GPS jamming: Finnair suspends flights to city in Estonia / Russia, accused of interference

The Finnish airline announced on Monday that it is suspending its flights to Tartu, a city in eastern Estonia, for a month due to GPS signal interference in the area, which the Estonian foreign minister considers to be a “Russian hybrid attack”, reports Reuters and AFP.

The Finnair company, which also last week had to return to Helsinki two flights destined for Tartu, stated that it will resume its flights to the Estonian airport after it implements a technical solution that will not require a GPS signal.

“Finnair will suspend its daily flights to Tartu, Estonia, from April 29 to May 31, so that an alternative approach solution, which does not require a GPS signal, can be put into operation at Tartu Airport,” the Finnish company said. in a statement.

Jamming the GPS signal can “prevent a plane from approaching (the runway) and landing,” the airline says, adding that such interference “is quite common in the region.”

A Finnair spokeswoman explained that the airline currently does not know where the interference is coming from. “We don’t have that information,” she said.

The Estonian foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, instead believes that these GPS interferences are the result of “completely deliberate actions” on the part of Moscow and constitute a Russian “hybrid attack”. “It is a fact that Russia affects the GPS devices in the airspace of our region”, claimed the Estonian minister.

Estonia will raise the issue of GPS interference with its neighbors and intends to discuss it within the European Union and NATO, Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna also declared.

Tens of thousands of flights jammed by the Russians

GPS signal jamming has been happening since late 2022 and Russia is believed to be behind these events.

According to the Finnair airline, its pilots faced such situations “especially near (the Russian exclave of) Kaliningrad, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean”.

The German agency DPA reported at the beginning of this month that Estonia is also noticing more and more disruptions to GPS satellite navigation, sometimes as many as 20 times a day. “Every day we receive 10 to 20 reports from pilots that there is GPS interference in some areas where they pass through Estonia,” declared Ivar Vark, the head of air traffic control in this Baltic EU and NATO member country, on Estonian television. .

The Guardian also reported this month that around 46,000 aircraft have experienced GPS problems over the Baltic Sea since August last year, with most of the GPS problems occurring in Eastern Europe, bordering Russia.

And Germany said Russia was “very likely” behind the series of disruptions affecting GPS navigation in the Baltic region, pointing to the Kaliningrad exclave as the source of the problem.

“Persistent disruptions to the global satellite navigation system are very likely of Russian origin and are based on disruptions in the electromagnetic spectrum, including those originating from the Kaliningrad region,” a spokesman for the German Ministry of Defense told Reuters.

He declined to provide details on how Berlin carried out the analysis or the exact nature of the disruptions, citing “military security reasons”.

A government source in Berlin also told Reuters that Russia is also believed to have jammed the satellite signal of a plane used by British Defense Minister Grant Shapps when his plane flew near Kaliningrad.

The aviation industry has expressed concern about an increase in GPS interference related to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Jamming GPS signals can be disruptive to commercial aircraft, but they can usually navigate by other means.

Read also: