Questions have arisen over the official Brussels’ account of a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Bulgaria that was reportedly targeted by Russian saboteurs.
Flightradar24, a real-time flight tracking service, challenged the European Union’s account and claimed the story was much less spectacular than originally indicated.
In a much-viewed post on X, Sweden-based Flightradar24 stated that the aircraft’s transponder reported “good GPS signal quality from takeoff to landing”.
Online data showed that the flight, scheduled for 1 hour and 48 minutes, took 1 hour and 57 minutes, suggesting minimal disruption. This directly contradicted Brussels’ claims of severe jamming, raising questions about the EU’s narrative.
“The aircraft’s transponder reported good GPS signal quality from take-off to landing,” Flightradar 24 stated.
Flightradar24’s GPS jamming map, which uses Navigation Integrity Category (NIC) values to track signal disruptions, has been instrumental in monitoring such incidents globally, lending weight to the assessment.
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… pic.twitter.com/qiSNfCTJtZ
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) September 1, 2025
Russia’s Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, had already denied involvement, dismissing the accusations as “incorrect” in a statement to the Financial Times on September 1.
The FT wrote that von der Leyen’s plane was forced to circle the airport for an hour during her August 31 trip to Bulgaria.
Pilots reportedly were forced to use paper maps after its GPS signal was targeted.
“The GPS of the entire airport area went dark,” one source told the newspaper.
Arianna Podesta, deputy chief spokesperson for the EC said it could confirm the GPS was jammed.
“We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia,” she said.
On September 2, chief EC spokesperson Paula Pinho was much more careful in her assessment of the events in Plovdiv.
At the midday briefing she was asked by several journalists about details of the alleged sabotage amid growing doubts but remained cursory.
Pinho said she could verify there had been GPS jamming and that the plane, fortunately, landed safely. She also reiterated that Bulgarian air traffic control authorities had been the first to acknowledge the incident.
Rather than going into specifics, Pinho said that “independently of what has happened in that particular flight, what we can also say is that, since the beginning of this [Ukraine] war … there has been a considerable and very notable increase in GPS jamming and recently spoofing occurrences in Bulgaria and other eastern member states”.
She said it was a reason to continue to invest in defence and in readiness. According to Pinho, jamming was an increasing phenomenon and the EC was working on countering it.
When journalists pressed for details, such as the pilots’ reported use of paper maps, Pinho said they “could only refer to those who have really first hand information”, in particular the Bulgarians.
She could not give details of the flight time either, only that it took “considerably longer” than scheduled.
Brussels Signal reached out to the Plovdiv air traffic control centre centre without response at the time of writing.
Aviation expert Scott Bateman MBE, a former RAF pilot, has highlighted the broader implications of GPS jamming on social media, noting its prevalence in conflict zones including Ukraine and the Baltic region.
Bateman emphasised that while jamming poses risks — potentially increasing the chance of collisions — modern aircraft rely on multiple navigation systems, reducing immediate danger.
Similarly, Carlos Perez Ferrer, an aviation analyst, has pointed out that GPS disruptions, while concerning, were often overstated for political purposes. He referred to the EC as “drama queens” regarding the latest incident.
They are Drama queens. GPS spoofing (and jamming) is quite normal in the area. There are normal procedures to deal with it. Almost any pilot nowadays has experienced gps jamming and spoofing. Its a pain in the ass but nor complicated to deal with. There are even maps in real time… pic.twitter.com/1ix1EQstRj
— Carlos Perez Ferrer (@carlospapafox) September 1, 2025
The episode was reminiscent of claims by left-wing US politician Hillary Clinton, who during her presidential campaign in 2008, claimed she landed “under sniper fire” in Tuzla, Bosnia, in 1996 as First Lady. She described a harrowing scene where she and her daughter Chelsea had to run for cover.
Video footage later surfaced showing a calm arrival with no visible threat, only a greeting ceremony with a young girl presenting a poem.
Clinton admitted she “misspoke”, attributing the error to sleep deprivation but the incident was widely criticised as an exaggeration to bolster her foreign policy credentials.
