Overview

• EU officials confirmed a navigation outage during the Aug. 31 approach to Plovdiv, with pilots using paper charts and alternative procedures to land without diversion or injuries.
• Bulgarian authorities reported suspicions of intentional Russian interference in the local GPS environment, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any involvement.
• Eurocontrol and technical monitoring maps recorded disturbances near Plovdiv on the day of the incident, but FlightRadar24’s public data questioned the reported scale and duration of the disruption.
• The European Commission, EASA and Eurocontrol are developing detection and mitigation plans for civil aviation, building on EU sanctions against entities linked to signal interference and leveraging Galileo authentication tools.
• The episode fits a wider pattern of jamming and spoofing affecting Eastern and Northern Europe, with recent disruptions reported by airlines and officials including Germany’s armed forces chief, and it has spurred proposals such as Italy’s push to limit public tracking of state flights.