Big holes have started to appear in a widely reported story about the plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Bulgaria, which reportedly had its GPS targeted by Russia.
The Brussels’ bureau chief of the Financial Times, Henry Foy, was onboard the flight on August 31 and broke the story that Russia had jammed the plane’s GPS. He said it was forced to circle Plovdiv Airport for an hour, only to land using “paper maps” instead of electronic navigation.
A EC spokesperson said that according to the Bulgarian intelligence services, Russia was behind the incident, but refrained from going into detail.
Shortly after, authoritative sources using real-time flight tracking services challenged the European Union’s account and claimed the story was much less dramatic than originally indicated.
On September 2, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) told Brussels Signal that it was looking into the incident. It confirmed that there are other systems in place in case a plane’s GPS is unavailable, which would make the claimed use of paper maps improbable.
John Franklin, the lead specialist for communications and safety promotion at EASA, said: [Aviation industry experts] EUROCONTROL and EASA are currently looking into the facts of the reported event.
“In cases such as this, we depend on the competent authorities responsible for Bulgarian airspace and the aircraft operator to provide official reporting.
“While these events can present a challenge to flight safety, there are mitigations in place to ensure safety is maintained in such circumstances.
“If GPS fails, or when pilots identify that a signal is being spoofed or jammed, there are other systems both onboard the aircraft and on the ground that pilots can rely on to continue the flight safely,” Franklin said.
Aviation specialist Marcel van den Berg, who made a name for himself by debunking myths about the MH17 flight, looked at thee conversation the pilots had with the control tower, which can be found online.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-backed forces on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all onboard.
Van den Berg said that the pilot of von der Leyen’s plane accepted instructions for an RNP or GPS-based approach to the southern Bulgarian airport’s runway 30 at 14:05 UTC. He then reported GPS issues and requested radar vectors – specific heading instructions from air traffic controllers – which were unavailable.
But rather than resorting to paper maps, the pilot switched to standard radio-based navigation systems and requested to fly to the PDV VOR beacon – a type of short-range VHF radio navigation system for aircraft – to set up an ILS (Instrument Landing System) approach using ground-based navigation aids independent of GPS.
After landing, one of the pilots thanked air traffic control for the help.
On September 2, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said that there was no reason to investigate the incident.
He said that since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the conflict had increasingly involved so-called electronic warfare, which included intentional disruptions in the radio frequency spectrum.
“These are all examples of interference affecting the radio frequency spectrum used by GPS signals transmitted from satellites orbiting at altitudes of around 20 km above the Earth,” Zhelyazkov said.
The PM pointed out that regional GPS disruption was not specifically targeted at any particular aircraft.
“Such events occur on a daily basis, and aircraft have been taking off and landing long before GPS systems existed,” Zhelyazkov said.
He said that there were established international protocols for such situations, which are applied in all countries monitored by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. These protocols stipulate that in the event of GPS disruption, conventional navigation methods using instruments are employed.
He said the Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority immediately proposed an alternative landing method using ground-based navigation aids (ILS).
The Zhelyazkov emphasised that Bulgaria’s air traffic control followed all required procedures and that the incident did not differ from similar other ones linked to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the use of electronic warfare techniques.
“Unfortunately, this is one of the side effects, though not a minor one, of such conflicts,” he concluded.
Brussels Signal reached out to Foy for comment but had not received a reply at the time of writing.
On September 1, Sweden-based live flight tracker Flightradar24 had already stated that the aircraft’s transponder reported “good GPS signal quality from takeoff to landing”.
It found that the Belgian-registered Dassault Falcon 900 (OO-GPE) von der Leyen was on was the only business jet to land at Plovdiv Airport on August 31 and its flight log shows no sign of circling for an hour
Aviation experts added that GPS jamming was prevalent in the region and emphasised that while that posed risks — potentially increasing the chance of collisions — modern aircraft relied on multiple navigation systems, reducing immediate danger.
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