- By Soumyaroop Mukherjee
- Mon, 01 Dec 2025 06:52 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Delhi Airport GPS Spoofing: The Ministry of Civil Aviation confirmed that attempts were made to interfere with the communication of the GPS near Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport after the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) made it mandatory in 2023 to report incidents of spoofing. The disclosure came in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha by Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu. Besides Delhi, GNSS interference has been reported from airports in Kolkata, Amritsar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai.
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What Is GPS Spoofing?
GPS spoofing is a form of cyber-attack where fake satellite signals are relayed to confuse the aircraft navigation systems. This results in the disruption of the smooth landing and takeoff of the flights. Cases of spoofing have been reported mostly in the conflict zones of the world, in the Middle East and in West Asia or in military action areas or electronic warfare zones.
Spoofing is done through the following ways:
- Cyber criminals and attackers first send out fake GPS signals that appear to imitate original signals emerging from real satellites.
- Aircraft receivers get those signals, which leads to confusion that in turn results in wrong location, altitude, speed, and timing data. This could be life-threatening in aviation.
- In simple words, what appears to be real for the pilots is actually a false image created by confusion.
How Did GPS Spoofing Disrupt Flight Operations At Delhi’s IGI?
According to officials of the civil aviation, GPS spoofing affected flights that were approaching Runway 10/28. The runway, which is built with CAT III specifications, is especially used during winter.
Spoofed signals corrupted the GPS-based landing system of flights, which affected precision-based landings. Several pilots reported wrong positional data while they approached the runway. Airlines subsequently were advised to rely on ground-based navigation, also called Minimum Operation Network (MON), which emerged as a great deterrence to GPS spoofing.
What Was The Operational Impact?
- Several flights of Air India and Vistara were diverted.
- Pilots approaching Delhi airspace were given repetitive ATIS warnings to be cautious.
- New landing procedures and visual approach protocols had to be utilised.
- Delays in the landing and takeoff led to a congestion of flights at the airport when some runways remained non-functional.