Russia Jams Thousands of Airline GPS Systems

Russia appears to be jamming airline GPS systems in the Baltic region, and it’s wreaking havoc with airlines.

The Guardian reports that more than 2,300 Ryanair flights have reported incidents of GPS interference since last August, according to a report, as well as 82 at British Airways and almost 1,400 at Wizz Air.

Using public flight logs, researchers from GPSJAM.org and The Sun found that 46,000 aircraft reported sat-nav problems while in the Baltic region between August 2023 and March 2024.

An aircraft’s GPS could be spoofed to mislead the flight crew into believing they are somewhere else, at a different altitude or even flying at a different speed.

Bogus data has forced planes to swerve and dive to avoid phantom obstacles that were not really there.

The jamming seems to be concentrated around Russia's Kaliningrad exclave — a key military area for Moscow, Politico.com reports.

“Russia is regularly attacking the aircraft, passengers, and sovereign territory of NATO countries,” said Dana Goward, president of the U.S.-based Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a GPS users lobby group.

While GPS jamming can pose a danger to air travel, especially during take off and landing, pilots are trained to use alternative instruments if GPS navigation isn’t available to them, The Times reports.

“More generally, GPS jamming is a known issue that’s increasing in frequency while the Baltic Sea is a target hotspot,” the newspaper said. “In a report released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in September 2023, the industry body also cited the Black Sea, southeastern Mediterranean area and the Middle East, and the Arctic region as areas frequently impacted by GPS jamming.”

The Guardian said the British government doesn’t threaten the safety of air pax, but that jamming is ‘wildly irresponsible.”