Revelation in Parliament: GPS Data Tampering Reported at Major Airports Including Delhi and Mumbai
National Desk: The central government has informed Parliament that several major airports in India have reported incidents of GPS spoofing and GNSS interference. The airports affected include Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Amritsar, Bengaluru, and Chennai. Officials explained that these incidents disrupt satellite-based navigation systems, which can directly impact flight operations.
In November 2023, the DGCA issued mandatory reporting guidelines for all airlines and airports regarding such incidents. Since then, reports have been regularly received from across the country. Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu assured Parliament that whenever satellite navigation faces interruptions, India’s minimum operating network, which relies on ground-based traditional navigation and surveillance systems, is capable of ensuring safe flight operations. He added that major airports are consistently logging these events to enable prompt response to any potential risk.
What Are GPS Spoofing and GNSS Interference?
GPS spoofing is a form of cyberattack in which attackers transmit fake satellite signals. This results in aircraft or any GPS-based device receiving incorrect location data. Such manipulation can feed wrong position inputs, false alerts, or inaccurate terrain warnings to an aircraft’s navigation system, potentially causing it to drift off its actual route.
Recently, several aircraft near Delhi Airport received incorrect location data by up to 60 nautical miles. As a safety measure, some flights had to be diverted to nearby airports such as Jaipur and Lucknow.
Risks Around Airports Due to GPS or GNSS Disruptions
Near airports, GPS spoofing or GNSS interference can severely impact navigation accuracy, airspace safety, and pilot workload. Modern aircraft depend heavily on these systems. Any disruption in GPS/GNSS signals can create errors in an aircraft’s position, altitude, and speed, leading to deviations from designated routes or entry into sensitive areas.
Key systems such as runway awareness, terrain warning, and autopilot are GPS-dependent. In case of spoofing, these systems may generate false warnings or fail entirely, increasing the risk of runway or obstacle collisions. This is particularly dangerous during landing and approach, when aircraft are closest to the ground. Incorrect positional data can cause runway misalignment, glide-path deviations, or sudden go-around situations.
Additionally, if multiple aircraft experience GPS errors in the same region, Air Traffic Control (ATC) may struggle to determine correct aircraft positions. This can reduce safe separation between aircraft and elevate workload for both ATC and pilots.
The government emphasized the need for robust protection of GNSS systems and the deployment of multiple redundancy layers to prevent such hazardous scenarios and ensure continued aviation safety.
