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Why are planes "disappearing" when flying over the Middle East?

2023-09-27 12:52:01Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Why are planes "disappearing" when flying over the Middle East?
The airspace where the planes "disappeared".

On at least 12 occasions - between August 29 and September 21 - planes have gone "missing" while flying over Middle Eastern airspace, with pilots reporting to their companies and specialist platforms that they received completely false signals in the system from GPS.

The first precedent was registered on the night of September 19, when the pilots of a Boeing 777 with about 200 passengers on board "lost" in the sky while flying over Iraq.

"What time is it? Where are we?', they asked themselves as the navigation systems suddenly failed and no longer provided any space-time coordinates. About ten days later, the commander and first officer of an Embraer 190 realized they were flying over Baghdad when they thought they were somewhere else. And in fact their true position was about 100 kilometers east of the Iraqi capital.

These strange incidents, and at the same time potentially harmful to those who fly there, are happening in the Middle East, disorienting the computer systems on board the aircraft and causing the cockpit to lose the ability to direct the flight.

According to experts, it is not only a problem for the normal continuation of the journey, but for the fact that the disturbance can cause planes to end up in areas where they are not authorized to fly, even risking the downing of military fighters.

The disturbing reports concern the UM688 air route, one of the "sky highways" high above Iraq, very close to the border with Iran, not far from Turkey and where dozens of planes connecting Asia and Oceania to Europe pass every day.

"Of all the places we pass, the only place where we have navigation problems is UM688. The air route crosses Iraq and is very close to the border with Iran. Anyone who enters Iranian airspace without an authorized flight plan risks military intervention," wrote Ops Group experts, the platform where the pilots first raised the alarm.

In all the reported cases it is not a question of a "simple" problem with the GPS signal - as sometimes happens in Europe - but of receiving completely incorrect indications from the GPS which directly affect the flight plans.

Fictitious drift
In most cases, the erroneous GPS signal has moved the aircraft by at least 60 nautical miles (about 97 kilometers). The on-board systems – which manage the flight through the autopilot – start to react because they have to correct the route based on the plan loaded into the system which includes passing through some specific airways.

In this way the plane ends up somewhere else and the only thing that can be done is to deactivate the instruments, so that the flight can continue thanks to the indications from the ground.

Technically, the incorrect information ends up knocking out the IRS, the onboard inertial system that aligns the plane's navigation equipment with Earth coordinates. As a result, the watch that shows the coordinated universal time for pilots does not work properly, nor do the Vor-Dme sensors that allow commanders and first officers to know their position and distance at any moment. Deprived of this type of information, the crews were forced to seek precise coordinates for the route from the control centers of the areas over which they were flying.

“I have been flying this Embraer 190 for 13 years. I tried everything I know but it didn't help. Both IRS lost their position, "disagreement" messages appeared with the Flight Management System," said one of the pilots involved. What worries experts the most is that, in theory, the IRS should not be able to receive inaccurate satellite information, especially in the latest generation aircraft.

The Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority has been contacted and asked for more details about the incidents, but they have not yet responded, as have some of the airlines involved, which are from the Middle East, Europe and Asia.


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