The Facebook group “Weather and Climate in Lithuania” showed how GPS interference looks like on a map. On the map – GPS disturbances were recorded on April 23-30.
“The nasty big neighbor continues to ruin the lives of the little neighbors. Especially as you can see on the map, Estonia suffers, where the GPS signal is disrupted more often than elsewhere and thus causes additional challenges for aircraft pilots, but flights are safe, because there are other means of navigation besides GPS.
Despite this, as flightradar24 wrote on Monday, Finnair is suspending flights from Helsinki to Tartu (Estonia) until the end of May due to GPS interference. Tartu Airport currently has a GPS-based arrival procedure only, so planes cannot land if GPS interference continues. Flights are expected to resume after the airport implements a non-GPS aircraft approach procedure.
GPS interference increased in 2023 In the end. Russia disrupts signals not only in Estonia, around the exclave of Karalauči, the Suwalki corridor, but also in the vicinity of Moscow and St. Petersburg, apparently in order to prevent increased Ukrainian drone attacks. “Unfortunately, where there are fewer airplanes, there are fewer important meteorological measurements carried out by aircraft,” writes “Orai ir klimatas in Lithuania”.
Baltic ministers warn
The foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia accused Russia of disrupting the work of the GPS satellite navigation system in the Baltic Sea region. As a result, they warned of an increased threat of aviation accidents in the region, according to The Financial Times.
According to the ministers, on April 25 and 26 two Finnish airline Finnair planes were flying from Helsinki to the Estonian city of Tartu, but were forced to return to the departure airport due to GPS interference. The pilots made this decision because they were not sure they would be able to reach their destination safely.
“If someone turns off your lights when you’re driving at night, the journey will become dangerous. The situation in the Baltic region near the borders of Russia has now become too dangerous to be ignored,” emphasized the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
This is called a hybrid attack
Estonian authorities consider GPS jamming “part of Russia’s hostile activities” and have raised the issue in talks with allies, the country’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said. According to him, Moscow’s actions “are a hybrid attack and a threat to our people and security that we will not tolerate.”
From 2023 until August 2024 since the end of March, the number of cases of GPS signal jamming in the Baltic Sea region has increased from less than 50 to 350 per week.
