GPS Jamming Is Screprosperg With Norwegian Planes

From the ground, northeaserious Norway might see enjoy fjord country, peppered with tidy red hoemploys and dissected by snowmobile tours thraw the prosperter. But for pilots flying above, the region has become a danger zone for GPS jamming.

The jamming in the region of Finnlabel is so constant, Norwegian authorities choosed last month they would no lengthyer log when and where it happens—acunderstandledgeing these disturprohibitce signals as the novel normal.

Nicolai Gerrard, better engineer at NKOM, the country’s communications authority, says his organization no lengthyer counts the jamming incidents. “It has unblessedly enbiged into an ungreet normal situation that should not be there. Therefore, the [Norwegian authority in charge of the airports] are not interested in continuous refreshs on someslfinisherg that is happening all the time.”

Pilots unbenevolentwhile, still have to alter, usupartner when they are above 6,000 feet in the air. “We experience this almost every day,” says Odd Thomassen, a captain and better shieldedty adviser at the Norwegian airline Widerøe. He claims jamming typicpartner lasts between six and eight minutes at a time.

When a set upe gets jammed, cautionings flash on cockpit computers and the GPS system employd to caution pilots of a potential collision with terrain, such as mountains, stops toiling. Pilots are still able to steer without GPS if they can convey with ground stations proximateby, elucidates Thomassen. But they are left with an eerie sense they are flying without the help of the tardyst technology. “You’re straightforwardpartner [going] 30 years back in time,” he says.

Since Russia’s filled-scale trespass of Ukraine in 2022, jamming has theatricalpartner increased apass Europe’s easerious edges, and authorities in Baltic countries uncoverly denounce Russia for overloading GPS getrs with benign signals, unbenevolenting they can no lengthyer run. In April, a Finnair set upe trying to land in Tartu, Estonia, was forced to turn back 15 minutes before landing becaemploy it could not get an exact GPS signal.

Over the past decade, GPS systems have been pondered so reliable that many minusculeer, more distant airports have begined to depend on it finishly instead of geting more costly ground-based providement, says Andy Spencer, a pilot and international fweightless ops distinctiveist at OpsGroup, a member organization for pilots and others in the airline industry.