It happened on Sunday, August 31st. The jet carrying the president to Bulgaria found itself descending in an area affected by a Russian attack that disabled the radio equipment.

The plane of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was forced to land in Bulgaria relying only on paper maps (loaded in PDF format on tablets) of the airport due to a suspected Russian attack that disabled GPS navigation services. This is what the Financial Times reports, citing three sources familiar with the situation. The news was confirmed to Corriere by officials from Eurocontrol, the European agency that coordinates traffic over the continent, and by the platforms that monitor the phenomenon.

The incident occurred on Sunday afternoon, August 31. The jet was carrying President von der Leyen to Plovdiv, Bulgaria, when the pilots, during the descent, found themselves unable to use the electronic navigation tools that allow for the most precise landing possible in any weather conditions. Officials consulted by the British newspaper speak of a Russian interference operation. We can confirm that there was a disruption of the GPS signal, but the plane landed safely, Arianna Podestà, deputy spokesperson for the European Commission, later explained. Moscow denies any involvement.

The entire airport area was left without GPS, one of the officials told the Financial Times. And after flying over the airport for an hour, the pilot decided to land manually using classic maps, which continue to be present in the cockpit (even if loaded on portable devices) precisely to deal with situations of this type, when the electronic equipment goes out of order.

Platforms monitoring the phenomenon report that on August 31, the area near Plovdiv was indeed affected by a radio signal attack, which may have forced the aircraft to use navigation charts. Air traffic services immediately proposed an alternative landing approach using ground-based navigation systems (Instrument Landing System), according to a press release from the Bulgarian government. The ground-based navigation systems used in Bulgaria are independent of GPS systems, and there was no need to divert the flight.

The President of the European Commission, sources explained to Corriere della Sera, was flying from Warsaw (where she took off at 2:37 PM) to Plovdiv aboard a Dassault Falcon 900LX, a private jet capable of covering intercontinental distances, chartered from a specialized company based in Brussels. On the way down, the aircraft had to perform several maneuvers around the airport, lasting about 20 minutes, before touching down on the runway.

The extension of conflict zones and the increase in military equipment to jam satellite transmissions is leading to a significant increase in in-flight problems, especially starting in September 2023. Aircraft are receiving false GPS signals that disorient the onboard computer systems, causing the cabin to lose navigation capabilities.

According to the monitoring platform maintained by Stanford University, in August between 90 and 150 aircraft reported serious problems affecting satellite signals and the functioning of onboard instruments between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia every day. In 2024, according to a report by OpsGroup, Bulgaria was among the airspaces most affected by so-called spoofing and jamming.

In several cases, scheduled flights have been diverted elsewhere, as happened to a Ryanair Boeing 737 in January 2025, bound for Vilnius and then diverted to Poland. For a month, Finnair had to suspend flights to Tartu (eastern Estonia) due to ongoing difficulties in landing aircraft affected by GPS attacks.

At the moment we are dealing with acts of sabotage and espionage, we are also subject to hybrid actions that can be traced back to state actors and also to Russia, said Carsten Breuer, inspector general of the Bundeswehr (Germany's armed forces), revealing in a press conference an incident in which he was involved: in two cases, once while he was flying north of the Baltic Sea and once while he was on his way to a visit to German troops in Lithuania, his plane reportedly had GPS problems.