GPS Jamming Is Screwing With Norwegian Planes

From the ground, northeastern Norway mightiness look similar fjord country, peppered with neat reddish houses and dissected by snowmobile tours done the winter. But for pilots flying above, the portion has go a information portion for GPS jamming.

The jamming successful the portion of Finnmark is truthful constant, Norwegian authorities decided past period they would nary longer log erstwhile and wherever it happens—accepting these disturbance signals arsenic the caller normal.

Nicolai Gerrard, elder technologist astatine NKOM, the country’s communications authority, says his enactment nary longer counts the jamming incidents. “It has unluckily developed into an unwanted mean concern that should not beryllium there. Therefore, the [Norwegian authorization successful complaint of the airports] are not funny successful continuous updates connected thing that is happening each the time.”

Pilots meanwhile, inactive person to adapt, usually erstwhile they are supra 6,000 feet successful the air. “We acquisition this astir each day,” says Odd Thomassen, a skipper and elder information advisor astatine the Norwegian hose Widerøe. He claims jamming typically lasts betwixt six and 8 minutes astatine a time.

When a level gets jammed, warnings flash connected cockpit computers and the GPS system utilized to pass pilots of a imaginable collision with terrain, specified arsenic mountains, stops working. Pilots are inactive capable to navigate without GPS if they tin pass with crushed stations nearby, explains Thomassen. But they are near with an eerie consciousness they are flying without the enactment of the latest technology. “You're fundamentally [going] 30 years backmost successful time,” helium says.

Since Russia’s full-scale penetration of Ukraine successful 2022, jamming has dramatically accrued crossed Europe’s eastbound edges, and authorities successful Baltic countries openly blasted Russia for overloading GPS receivers with benign signals, meaning they tin nary longer operate. In April, a Finnair level trying to onshore successful Tartu, Estonia, was forced to turn back 15 minutes earlier landing due to the fact that it could not get an close GPS signal.

Over the past decade, GPS systems person been considered truthful dependable that galore smaller, much distant airports person started to trust connected it wholly alternatively of maintaining much costly ground-based equipment, says Andy Spencer, a aviator and planetary formation ops specializer astatine OpsGroup, a subordinate enactment for pilots and others successful the hose industry.