The spread of war is creating new risks for airline passengers.

The conflicts in the Mideast, Russia and Ukraine are being blamed for a huge surge in 'GPS spoofing,' a type of digital attack that can interfere with onboard systems, sending passenger jets off course.

"GPS spoofing works well for confusing drones and simple missiles in a war zone when all you want to do is mess up their accuracy so they miss their target," explained David Learmount, the operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine and an expert on aviation issues.

With conflicts flaring around the world, the number of reported cases has jumped - by a whopping 400 percent. OpsGroup, which monitors risks across the aviation industry sector, says GPS spoofing now affects an average of 900 flights a day – up from around 200 daily during the first three months of the year.

This has led the US aviation regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, to warn pilots not to rely on GPS systems while flying near conflict zones.

GPS, short for Global Positioning System, is widely used at airports, replacing expensive ground devices that rely on radio beams to guide planes in. The problem is that GPS signals can be changed or blocked using relatively simple devices made from inexpensive, easy-to-find parts.

In March, a Turkish airliner bound for Beirut, Lebanon, had to turn around after it was unable to land because of a spoofed signal.

And at the end of April, Finnair announced it was suspending its flights into Tartu, Estonia, near the border with Russia. In a social media message the company said: "The approach methods currently used at Tartu Airport are based on a GPS signal and GPS interference in the area affects the usability of this method."

In July, the Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunications made a complaint to the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union accusing Israel of using GPS spoofing in its attempts to block Hezbollah attacks.

But Learmount says pilots have other options when GPS systems fail. Larger, trans-continental aircraft have in-built navigation systems which track the aircraft's position, speed and direction, independent of any outside influence. Planes also receive signals from ground-based navigation beacons which reveal its distance and direction from the beacon, although that obviously won't help pilots flying over the ocean.

"Finally, pilots can use maps and look out the window," Learmount told CGTN. "That's pretty demanding in a jet because it goes so fast, and doesn't work well at high altitude or in cloud."

Airlines try to avoid flying over warzones, but with hostilities in the Middle East now spreading across borders such conflicts are becoming increasingly difficult to avoid.

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