The growing threat of interference to Europe’s aviation sector has prompted authorities to draft a new plan to enhance safety in the skies.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and EUROCONTROL have published a joint Action Plan designed to strengthen the safety and resilience of European aviation operations amid the growing challenge of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference.

GNSS provides aircraft with precise positioning, navigation and timing information that is essential for a wide range of functions.

However, EASA warned interference with the signals has become a regular occurrence, in particular on the edge of conflict zones, and poses a threat to safety. The Action Plan focuses on maintaining safety in the near term while limiting impacts on airspace capacity and containing the threat of GNSS interference. It sets out short, mid and longer-term measures to mitigate the threat with harmonised operational procedures and phraseologies and to strengthen the robustness of GNSS‑based operations by clearly defining who needs to act, and by when.

“While the potential threat to aviation safety from GNSS interference has so far been mitigated by short-term actions such as raising pilot awareness, it is clear that more needs to be done,” said Florian Guillermet, EASA executive director. “This Action Plan lays out and prioritises short, mid and longer-term actions and, importantly, also assigns roles to the various aviation actors. By working together with EUROCONTROL and pooling our expertise, we have been able to create a strong plan that will enable the wider sector to come together to counter this threat.”

The plan comes after a letter sent in June last year by 13 EU Member States to the European Commission that called for immediate and coordinated European action to address the growing number of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) events affecting GNSS‑based systems.

The Action Plan also integrates proposals and guidance from international partners including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

“GNSS interference remains a significant and evolving challenge for European aviation, making today’s Action Plan an important step forward in our collective response,” said Raúl Medina, director-general, EUROCONTROL. “The Action Plan concretely supports our Member States and aviation partners as we work together to ensure the evolution and resilience of aviation’s critical infrastructure – one of the core goals of EUROCONTROL’s Trajectory 2030 strategy. I welcome the strong cooperation and close coordination with EASA and all our partners across the aviation sector on this Plan, which demonstrates our shared commitment to safety, and aims at delivering tangible benefits for the network, operators and passengers by making GNSS‑based operations more robust.”