A flight carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen encountered GPS jamming during its approach to Plovdiv Airport, Bulgaria, on August 31, 2025.
The aircraft involved was a Dassault Falcon 900LX (registration OO-GPE), operated by Luxaviation Belgium. It was conducting flight AAB53G from Warsaw Chopin Airport (WAW) to Plovdiv when the disruption occurred.
The incident, confirmed by the Commission, forced the crew to rely on manual navigation before landing safely.
European officials suspect the interference was deliberate and linked to Russia, adding to growing concerns about electronic warfare across European airspace.
Safe landing after signal loss
Von der Leyen’s visit to Bulgaria was part of a broader Eastern European tour aimed at reinforcing the EU’s solidarity with member states near Russia and Belarus.
Her trip included stops in Latvia, Finland, Estonia, and Poland, and will conclude in Lithuania. In Bulgaria, she toured a munitions plant producing ammunition for Ukraine and emphasized the country’s growing role in Europe’s defense industry.
I am glad to welcome @vonderleyen to Bulgaria. Together we will visit VMZ – the largest state-owned defense enterprise – to discuss key priorities for European security and defense, and to further strengthen the Bulgaria–EU partnership. pic.twitter.com/aI1iVBGG2y
— Rossen Jeliazkov (@R_JeliazkovPM) August 31, 2025
According to the Financial Times, the disruption disabled satellite navigation signals in the airport’s airspace. Bulgarian air traffic controllers switched the aircraft to a ground-based approach.
The Kremlin rejected the accusations, calling them “incorrect.” Bulgarian aviation authorities confirmed the jamming and reported a sharp increase in GPS interference and spoofing in recent years.
A pattern of interference
This incident adds to a growing pattern of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) disruptions that have intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has identified four key hotspots for interference: the Baltic Sea region, eastern Finland, the Black Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The impact has already been felt by airlines. In April and May 2024, Finnair suspended flights to Tartu, Estonia after repeated jamming incidents prevented safe approaches.
In March 2024, a RAF Falcon 900LX carrying UK Defense Minister Grant Shapps also encountered GPS jamming near the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Why GPS jamming is a growing risk
While modern aircraft can navigate without GPS using inertial navigation systems, satellite-based positioning remains critical for approaches and landings, particularly at airports without an Instrument Landing System (ILS).
Persistent interference raises the risk of operational delays, diversions, and heightened safety concerns, particularly in Eastern Europe and other conflict-adjacent regions.
Aviation stakeholders are increasingly exploring alternative navigation technologies to reduce reliance on GNSS. Among them are quantum-based positioning systems, which utilize Earth’s magnetic field for orientation, and stellar navigation systems, such as Sodern’s Astradia, which tracks the positions of fixed stars to provide accurate positioning even when satellite signals are disrupted.
3 comments
Since when does a Falcon need a GPS to land?
Are you kidding us, right?
Have you ever heard of INS(RNAV), ILS and VOR/NDB?
Shame on you.
Are you journalists at all? Did you even ask for details of this “incident”?
You’re right: a Falcon 900LX, like most modern business jets, does not need GPS to land. It also has inertial navigation, the instrument landing system, and ground radio beacons, so the crew had safe backups.
What GPS does today is make day-to-day flying smoother: many European departures and arrivals are built around satellite guidance, it keeps the aircraft’s navigation up to date, and it drives cockpit maps and safety cues. When the GNSS signal is jammed, some procedures aren’t available, warnings appear, workload rises, and at airports that rely mostly on GPS, you may have to hold or divert.
Our report focused on the growing operational disruption, not suggesting that the flight lacked safe options. If you check the flight path of AAB53G, the impact on flight time appears minimal.
Finally, it appeared that there was no jamming of GPS signal nor any impact on the flight of Ms von der Leyen. However it is good to have such discussion like this one to make clear for the large public how contemporary air navigation systems work. AeroTime helps to make this story clearer after so many ridiculous things were said by politicians, journalists, etc.