Russia accused of jamming GPS signal as EU chief's plane lands in Bulgaria
Source: CBS News/AP
September 1, 2025 / 8:53 AM EDT
Brussels — A plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was hit by GPS jamming over Bulgaria in a suspected Russian operation, a spokesperson said Monday. The plane landed safely in Plovdiv airport and von der Leyen will continue her planned tour of the European Union's nations bordering Russia and Belarus, said the commission's spokesperson Arianna Podestà.
"We can indeed confirm that there was GPS jamming," Podestà said in a statement also shared separately with CBS News by a European Commission spokesperson. "We have received information from the Bulgarian authority that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia."
The Financial Times newspaper, which was the first to report the incident citing EU officials, said the GPS jamming forced the pilot to land the plane carrying von der Leyen using paper maps. Von der Leyen, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow's war in Ukraine, is on a four-day tour of the EU nations bordering Russia and its close ally Belarus.
"This incident actually underlines the urgency of the mission that the president is carrying out in the front-line member states," Podestà said. She said that von der Leyen has seen "firsthand the everyday challenges of threats coming from Russia and its proxies."
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-accused-of-jamming-gps-signal-as-eu-chiefs-plane-lands-in-bulgaria/
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There were three narrow safe flight corridors from West Germany to Berlin. My job was to keep us on course. Getting out of a corridor could have severe consequences, from formal protests by the USSR to being shot down.
Enroute, the Russians would jam our radars and practice "meaconing" our electronic navigation equipment. The latter involved transmitting on the same frequency as a real nav-aid (VORTAC, ADF) a super-strong signal from a location which was some distance away from the legitimate station.
We looked out the window and read our maps to cross-check our instruments. This mission had a high pucker factor.
I'm happy to report I never got shot down. 
The Berlin Airlift officially ended on 30 September 1949 after fifteen months.
I was born in May 1949, so I was in diapers at the time.
The US Air Force had delivered 1,783,573 tons (76.4% of total) and the RAF 541,937 tons (23.3% of total) totaling 2,334,374 tons, nearly two-thirds of which was coal, on 278,228 flights to Berlin.
Had the C141 Starlifter (my aircraft) been operational, it would have taken 74,460 flights to accomplish the mission. Our big brother, the C5A Galaxy, could have done it in 17,617 flights, which would have been a mere blip on the radarscope of its history.
The experience of flying the same routes they did, landing at Tempelhof Airport, standing beside the Berlin Wall, peering at East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie, and talking to adults who were the children catching the candy during the Berlin Airlift -- was a memory I'll never forget . . .
Until I'm back in diapers, I guess. 
