Finnair is canceling all flights to Tartu, a city in eastern Estonia. The reason: GPS disruptions from Russia.
Finnair has stopped flying to the Estonian city since Monday, April 29, after two planes were unable to land there last week. Due to severely disrupted GPS signals, the two flights eventually returned to Helsinki. The Finnish company has announced that flights have been suspended until May 31. In the meantime, the airport is planning to set up an alternative system that does not require GPS signals. Finnair flights were the only international scheduled services to and from the airport.
Estonia is furious about the disruptions. According to his foreign minister, these are ‘deliberate actions’ as part of a Russian ‘hybrid attack’. “Russia knows very well that this disruption is very dangerous for our aviation and violates international treaties,” the minister said. Tartu is not the only region affected by Russian GPS jams. The disruptions also cause navigation problems above other places around the border, and not only in the Baltic States. ‘It’s also starting to come to the north side of the Gulf of Finland. And the same thing happened in Sweden, where it reached Swedish airspace,” Finnair pilot Lauri Soini told Reuters.
