✈️ Business Aviation Traffic in Latvia Plunges 30%, Divergence Among Baltic Three Deepens
GPS interference and geopolitical security crises are reshaping the Baltic business aviation landscape, with impacts showing clear country-level divergence. Latvia has experienced a series of drone strikes on oil storage facilities, compounded by political instability, making it the most pressured market for business aviation operations. Meanwhile, a Royal Air Force Falcon 900LX encountered GPS signal interference near the Russian border while flying from Estonia, and the Lithuanian government has warned that Russia has developed the capability to spoof GPS signals deep into European territory. According to Avi-Go data, from May 1 to 27, 2026, combined business aviation movements across the three Baltic states totaled 411 flights, down 9.3% year-on-year from 453 flights in the same period of 2025. However, country-level trends diverged sharply: Latvia plummeted from 142 to 99 movements, a decline of 30.3%; Estonia fell 15.0% to 142 movements; while Lithuania bucked the trend with 18.1% growth to 170 movements, becoming the only market in the region to record positive growth.
Impact: The traffic contraction in Latvia and Estonia will directly compress revenues for local FBOs and ground handlers, while Lithuania's counter-trend growth signals a structural shift in regional demand, suggesting operators may have proactively rerouted around high-risk nodes. For charter brokers active in the region, GPS interference risk has escalated from an occasional incident to a normalized operational variable, significantly increasing the complexity of route planning and diversion contingency preparation.
Recommendation: Operators should complete a GPS interference risk assessment for Baltic and Nordic routes by end of June 2026, with focused review of arrival and departure procedures at Riga and Tallinn, and prioritize aircraft equipped with inertial navigation backup capability for missions in this region. Brokers may consider Vilnius as the preferred Baltic landing node in the near term, while proactively disclosing GPS interference risks to clients to reinforce differentiated competitive advantage through demonstrated professional contingency planning capabilities.