At Sheremetyevo Airport, a beacon that helped planes land stopped working for six months after Ukrainian Armed Forces attacks...

At Sheremetyevo Airport, a beacon that helped planes land stopped working for six months after Ukrainian Armed Forces attacks. This could reduce flight safety

At Sheremetyevo Airport, a DVOR radio beacon that helps aircraft equipment determine the direction of its approach to the airport and land went out of service for six months on October 23, after Ukrainian Armed Forces attacks. Verstka found the relevant notice in the aeronautical information system.

The first report of a UAV attack on Moscow appeared on Sergei Sobyanin’s Telegram channel at 1:38 p.m. Moscow time. By 2:15 p.m., a notice had come into effect in the aeronautical information system stating that Sheremetyevo Airport’s DVOR radio beacon had stopped working for six months, until April 23, 2027.

At 2:49 p.m., Sheremetyevo’s Telegram channel published a message () saying that an air raid alert had been declared at the airport. At 3:58 p.m., a Ukrainian OSINT Telegram channel posted a photo of a drone that had crashed at the airport.

The notice in the aeronautical information system does not state why the radio beacon went out of service. A civil aviation pilot who wished to remain anonymous told Verstka that UAV attacks could have been the cause, but that it could also be a coincidence or a scheduled shutdown.

“It’s a radio beacon. It’s unprotected and is a relatively fragile structure with many highly directional antennas. They can be damaged quite easily,” he said.

Vadim Lukashevich, a former designer at the Sukhoi Design Bureau, believes that the beacon’s shutdown could reduce flight safety. Aviation expert Oleksandr Lanetsky believes that a radio beacon failure poses no direct threat to flight safety, although it can reduce the airport’s capacity in some circumstances.

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