EU Says Von Der Leyen Plane’s GPS Was Jammed; Russia Blamed

The GPS of the airplane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was jammed while she was en route to Bulgaria on Sunday, an EU spokesperson said on Monday, adding that Russian involvement is suspected.

“We can indeed confirm that there was GPS jamming, but the plane landed safely in Bulgaria. We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia,” the EU spokesperson said.

As Security Affairs’ Pierluigi Paganini reports, Von der Leyen’s jet lost GPS near Plovdiv, forcing a manual landing with analogue maps after circling for an hour. Officials blame Russian interference. Bulgarian authorities reported a surge in GPS jamming and spoofing since 2022, which disrupts aircraft and ground system operations.

“A jet carrying von der Leyen to Plovdiv on Sunday afternoon was deprived of electronic navigational aids while on approach to the city’s airport, in what three officials briefed on the incident said was being treated as a Russian interference operation.” reported The Financial Times.

Bulgarian authorities confirmed the plane’s GPS signals were neutralized, and air traffic control provided alternative landing guidance using terrestrial navigation tools to ensure safety.

“The whole airport area GPS went dark,” said one of the officials.

The European Commission said “threats and intimidation are a regular component of Russia’s hostile actions” and that the incident would reinforce its commitment to “ramp up our defence capabilities and support for Ukraine”.

However, as Moon of Alabama reports, skepticism over Van der Leyen’s accusations is warranted: 

Here is what Flightradar was seeing at that time:

Flightradar24 @flightradar24 - 17:16 UTC · Sep 1, 2025

We are seeing media reports of GPS interference affecting the plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Some reports claim that the aircraft was in a holding pattern for 1 hour.

This is what we can deduce from our data.

* The flight was scheduled to take 1 hour and 48 minutes. It took 1 hour and 57 minutes.

* The aircraft’s transponder reported good GPS signal quality from take-off to landing.

Flightradar24 @flightradar24 - 17:50 UTC · Sep 1, 2025

The transponder signal transmitted by the aircraft contains a NIC value.
The NIC value encodes the quality and consistency of navigational data received by the aircraft.
Flightradar24 is using these NIC values to create the GPS jamming map at https://flightradar24.com/data/gps-jamming

The flight with Ursula von der Leyen on board transmitted a good NIC value from take-off to landing.

Āris Cēders @arisceders - 1:14 UTC · Sep 2, 2025

Still, they radioed about the “GPS issue” and requested ILS approach which is significantly less convenient in this particular case.

Flightradar24 @flightradar24 -

“Issue with GPS” can be any technical issue unrelated to GPS jamming. The aircraft was reporting a perfect signal. For sure they were not holding for 1h so the whole story just doesn’t make any sense.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the FT that ”your information is incorrect.”