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Holidays

Use our Travel forum for recommendations on everything from day trips to the best family-friendly holiday destinations.

Is anyone feeling jittery about flying long haul over the next few months .

11 replies

hattie43 · 24/04/2024 08:29

Just that really . With wars ongoing and new and now Russian interfering with planes gps

OP posts:
WinterMorn · 24/04/2024 08:30

Nope!

podcastrunner · 24/04/2024 08:31

This reply has been deleted

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idontlikealdi · 24/04/2024 08:31

Erm, no!

IncompleteSenten · 24/04/2024 08:34

Well, jamming is happening and it is dangerous. That is not in dispute. Russia is suspected of being behind it but as yet that is simply an accusation. But given something potentially dangerous is actually happening, only a fool would be completely dismissive of potential risks.
That said, the risks are not currently high enough to (just my opinion) justify a change in the general public's behaviour.
That could change at any point of course and it's important to keep up to date with what's happening.

hattie43 · 24/04/2024 08:38

I think it will just be a question of listening to foreign office advice .

OP posts:
WinterMorn · 24/04/2024 08:42

I can’t recall any mention of jamming on long haul flights whatsoever, all the coverage I have seen has been about short haul trips.

BroughttoyoubyBerocca · 24/04/2024 08:44

I’m worried about airspace around Middle East, hoping passenger flight routes will avoid area, like they did during the Gulf war.

Twilightstarbright · 24/04/2024 08:45

I work in the City of London, a stone’s throw from lots of big buildings that are at high risk of a terrorist attack, not to mention being on the tube most days. Statistically I’m at a bigger risk there than on a long haul flight.

notimagain · 24/04/2024 09:11

I’m no longer flying but I’ve witnessed GPS jamming and unless things have changed the MSM reports are very overblown, and I would not be using the word dangerous.

Yes it can be a problem and can restrict some of the operational aspects of a flights but GPS jamming does not mean you are lost or weaving all over the sky.

I guess at this point you can either skip to my conclusion but for anyone interested here’s a short background to this (aka TLDR):

The Russians have been jamming GPS in some places for years (Eastern Med near Syria) or for a couple of years around the Baltic.

They are not targeting specific aircraft ( certainly not just “British Jets” or however the DM likes to describe it), they simply jam the GPS signal to everybody over a large area.

However airliners have several sources of getting navigational information, not just GPS, so if the aircraft monitoring systems sense the GPS is jammed they automatically dump the GPS input and switch to using one of the alternatives to keep track of where it is, where it is going.

There’s usually a quick checklist to be run by the pilots to then up the automatic process but that’s about the sum of the drama on the flight deck.

The subsequent effects on the flight are aircraft type dependent but the main consequences tend to be that if GPS stays off you may not be able to use some airways (routes) and/or fly some types of bad weather instrument approaches to some runways at some airports but there are back ups to cater for that.

In reality you tend to get GPS back as soon as you are out of the jammed area and everything is back to normal.

Final point- GPS is relatively new - it was, and still is, possible to cross the Atlantic/Pacific flying predetermined routes to a high degree of accuracy without GPS…but it would be nice if the Russians stopped messing around with it.

Conclusion: there’s no reason to cancel a holiday because of GPS jamming…

TheaBrandt · 24/04/2024 09:13

Yep we’ve used the budget to stay somewhere really nice in Spain and feel I can look forward to it now without fretting. Plus the carbon guilt.

RoseAndRose · 24/04/2024 09:14

People flew long before GPS was rolled out, and planes have fallback systems for loss of one.

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