Finnair announced on Monday that it will suspend daily flights between Helsinki and Tartu, Estonia until June citing „GPS interference in the region.”
“Flight safety is always our top priority,” said Jari Paajanen, Finnair’s Director of Operations. “As the approach to Tartu currently requires a GPS signal, we cannot fly there in the event of GPS interference.”
In a post on X, the Finnish airline said: “We’re suspending our flights to Tartu from 29 April until 31 May.
The one-month suspension is intended to give Tartu Airport time to implement such a system. Finnair is the only airline operating international flights to Tartu.
“The approach methods currently used at Tartu Airport are based on a GPS signal and GPS interference in the area affects the usability of this method.”
Russia is widely suspected of jamming GPS signals close to its frontiers. Tartu airport is around 40km (25 miles) from the Russian frontier.
Finnair says it is working on “an alternative approach solution that doesn’t require a GPS signal”.
Last week, two Finnair flights had to divert back to Helsinki after GPS interference prevented the approach to Tartu. On both 25 and 26 April, the evening flight from the Finnish capital abandoned the planned landing and turned around.
Finnair says GPS interference has increased significantly since 2022, the year when Russia staged a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. GPS interference has also been encountered in the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. It is perpetrated in two forms: jamming, which makes it impossible for pilots to know their precise location using GPS and spoofing, whereby the aircraft’s systems are tricked into representing the wrong position.
PM’s ID document leaked in cyber attack on Romanian Parliament
