Finnair flights: Airline forced to suspend daily flights to Estonia Airport due to Russian GPS jamming

Finnair has announced it will suspend its daily flights to an European airport due to Russian GPS jamming. The airline said it will no longer fly to Tartu, Estonia, after jamming forced two airliners to turn back from the eastern Estonian city’s airport.

Flights will be suspended from April 29 to May 31, and the airline has apologised for the “inconvenience”. Jari Paajanen, Finnair’s director of operations, said: “We apologise for the inconvenience the suspension causes to our customers. Flight safety is always our top priority, and as the approach to Tartu currently requires a GPS signal, we cannot fly there in the event of GPS interference.”

“The systems on Finnair’s aircraft detect GPS interference, our pilots are well aware of the issue, and the aircraft have other navigation systems that can be used when the GPS system is unserviceable. Most airports use alternative approach methods, but some airports, such as Tartu, only use methods that require a GPS signal to support them.”

Finnair passengers who have booked to fly to Tartu over the next month will receive more information from the airline in due course, it said. Russian GPS jamming in the Baltic has caused interference to thousands of civilian airliners over the past two years.

It was recently revealed that thousands of flights including those of popular airlines Ryanair and Wizz Air have reportedly been affected by suspected Russian jamming of GPS systems. About 46,000 aircraft in total have logged problems with GPS over the Baltic Sea since last August.

Most of the GPS problems reported on the website have come in eastern Europe, bordering Russia. A Ryanair spokesperson said: “In recent years there has been a rise in intermittent GPS interference which has affected all airlines. Ryanair aircraft have multiple systems to identify aircraft location, including GPS. If any of the location systems, such as GPS, are not functioning then the crew, as part of standard operating procedures, switch to one of the alternate systems.”

In March the UK government confirmed that an RAF plane carrying the defence secretary, Grant Shapps, had its GPS signal jammed. It is understood that the GPS signal was blocked for around 30 minutes as Grant Shapps’ RAF jet flew close to the edge of Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland. 

Glenn Bradley, the head of flight operations at the CAA, has tried to ease worries by assuring that “aviation is one of the safest forms of air travel”. He said: “There are several safety protocols in place to protect navigation systems on commercial aircraft. GPS jamming does not directly impact the navigation of an aircraft, and while it is a known issue, this does not mean an aircraft has been jammed deliberately.”