The head of the United Nations aviation agency stood before a room of airline executives, intelligence analysts, and government officials in Malta and said what many of them already feared: the skies are no longer safe in the way the industry has assumed for decades. Juan Carlos Salazar, Secretary General of the International Civil Aviation Organization, delivered the warning at the 2026 World Overflight Risk Conference in St. Julian, Malta, on April 21. His message was blunt. Long-range missiles, armed drones, advanced air defence systems, and GPS jamming are creating conditions in which a civilian airliner could be misidentified, targeted, or simply caught in the wrong airspace at the wrong moment. The last time a major airliner was shot down over a conflict zone — Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people aboard — the world vowed it would never happen again. Salazar is telling the industry that the tools to prevent a repeat are not yet in place.

A New Kind of Threat

The risks Salazar described are not theoretical. They are happening right now, in real airspace, to real airlines. More than 700 flights operating through Gulf air corridors had experienced suspected GPS spoofing events by March 2026. Spoofing — where false satellite signals trick an aircraft navigation system into displaying the wrong position — is a quieter threat than a missile, but potentially just as lethal. A crew that believes it is on a safe flight path when it is not can fly into restricted airspace, terrain, or the path of military operations without ever receiving a warning. The proliferation of armed drones has made matters worse. In the skies over Ukraine, Iran, and the Red Sea, military and improvised unmanned systems operate at altitudes that overlap with commercial air traffic. A Shahed drone flying at 15,000 feet does not carry a transponder. It does not respond to air traffic control. And an air defence system trying to shoot it down cannot always distinguish between the drone and the airliner behind it.

Three Demands

Salazar laid out three immediate actions he wants member states to take. First, share threat intelligence rapidly when military activities pose risks to civilian aircraft — not hours or days later, but in real time. Second, strengthen risk-assessment mechanisms so airlines can make faster, better-informed decisions about whether to fly over or around conflict zones. Third, improve coordination between military and civilian authorities to prevent the misidentification of civilian aircraft as military targets. The third demand carries the heaviest weight. MH17 was destroyed because a Russian-operated Buk missile system could not — or did not bother to — distinguish a Boeing 777 at cruise altitude from a Ukrainian military transport. Twelve years later, the air defence systems proliferating across the Middle East, eastern Europe, and the Indo-Pacific are more capable, more numerous, and deployed in environments where civilian traffic continues to fly.

The Framework That Does Not Yet Exist

ICAO is developing a Global Crisis Management Framework designed to coordinate international responses when civilian aviation faces sudden threats. But Salazar was candid: the framework is reactive by design. It tells the industry what to do after a threat emerges. It does not prevent the threat from materialising. That prevention requires something much harder — a culture shift among military operators who have historically treated civilian air traffic as someone else’s problem. It requires real-time data sharing between defence ministries and civil aviation authorities. It requires airlines to accept that some profitable routes cross airspace that is no longer safe, even if no formal ban exists. The conference in Malta brought together the people who can make these changes. Whether they will is another question. In the meantime, 700 flights have already had their navigation systems fooled — and no one aboard knew it was happening.

Sources: ICAO, UN News, CNN, Osprey Flight Solutions, EASA