- A flight operated by Ryanair subsidiary Lauda Air had two aborted landings after its GPS signal jammed.
- The Airbus A320 was flying to Vienna but had to be diverted to Brno in the neighboring Czech Republic.
- GPS jamming, causing navigation issues, has increased since 2022, especially in the Baltics.
A flight was diverted after aborting two attempts to land when the aircraft’s GPS signal was disrupted.
The incident occurred on a flight operated by Lauda Air, a subsidiary of Ryanair, between the Latvian capital Riga and Vienna on December 30.
The plane, an Airbus A320, attempted two landings in Austria’s capital city before being diverted to Brno in the Czech Republic, data from Flightradar24 shows.
Die Presse, one of Austria’s largest newspapers, was the first outlet to report on the incident. It said that the captain on board the plane made an announcement to passengers about a minor technical problem when trying to land in Vienna.
When the flight successfully landed in Brno, the captain explained that the aircraft’s GPS devices had become jammed.
Generally, the system reboots itself after jamming, but as the plane approached Vienna, per Die Presse, this did not happen.
Jamming is an intentional radio frequency interference with global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that prevents planes from accessing satellite signals and makes the GNSS system “ineffective or degraded,” the European Union Aviation Safety Agency says.
Per Die Presse, the captain said that because of poor visibility, it was safer to avoid landing in Vienna while the GPS faced interference. He said the weather was better in Brno.
A spokesperson from Ryanair told Business Insider that flight FR748 from Riga to Vienna on Monday, December 30 “diverted to Brno due to a minor tech issue with the GPS system combined with low visibility (fog) at Vienna.”
“The aircraft landed normally at Brno at 22.52 local, where there was no issue with visibility, and passengers were transported by coach to Vienna. We sincerely apologise to passengers for any inconvenience caused as a result of this diversion.”
Since 2022, there has been a rise in planes experiencing issues with their satellite navigation systems over the Baltics. Officials have suggested that Russia may be to blame.
