A Ryanair flight descending into Vilnius airport on Thursday was diverted to Warsaw due to GPS interference, Lithuania’s air navigation authority has reported.
The Boeing 737 Max 8-200 departed London Luton on Thursday and was on approach to the runway at Vilnius airport in Lithuania, lowering to an altitude of 850 feet (259 meters), when it lifted off again.
The flight then headed to Warsaw, around 249 miles away, reports say.
A spokesperson of Lithuania’s air navigation authority said on Friday that “the plane experienced GPS signal interference,” adding that the pilot took the decision to divert the flight.
“All other planes were landing at the airport as usual,” the spokesperson said.
The country’s defence minister said that it is investigating the incident.
Pilots landing at Vilnius airport have reported over 800 instances of GPS interference over the last three months of last year. In the same period in 2023, there were only 124 reports, Lithuanian air navigation said, Reuters reported.
In April 2024, Finnair said it would be cancelling all its flights to Tartu airport in Estonia until June due to “GPS interference in the area”.
“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,” the Finnish airline said last year.
Finnair says GPS interference has increased significantly since 2022, with the airline’s pilots reporting interference near Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland.
Russia has been suspected of jamming or spoofing GPS signals close to its borders, but the country has denied interfering with communication and satellite networks.
An RAF aircraft carrying former UK defence secretary Grant Shapps in March 2024 had its GPS signal jammed for around half an hour.
The GPS signal of the plane was said to have been interfered with for half an hour while it passed the Russian territory of Kaliningrad.
The attack did not threaten the safety of the aircraft but left phones unable to connect to the plane’s wifi. The plane was forced to use other navigation systems available to the pilots.
It was reported last year that thousands of flights to and from UK airports had been targeted by Russian jamming systems.
Flights affected in the eight months to the end of March 2024 included 2,309 Ryanair, 1,368 Wizz Air, 82 British Airways and four easyJet, based on analysis of flight logs with GPSJAM.org.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said last year that GPS jamming does not directly affect the navigation of an aircraft and “while it is a known issue, this does not mean an aircraft has been jammed deliberately”.
The CAA added that GPS forms only part of an aircraft’s navigation system, saying that jamming and spoofing near conflict zones is often a by-product of military activity rather than deliberate actions.
The Independent has contacted Ryanair for comment.
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