The Ministry of Civil Aviation has confirmed that several major airports — including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Amritsar, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai — have reported incidents of GPS spoofing and signal interference. In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Civil Aviation Minister K. Rammohan Naidu said the Wireless Monitoring Organisation (WMO) has been tasked with tracing the origin of these attempts.

GPS spoofing occurs when fake satellite signals are transmitted to an aircraft’s navigation system, misleading pilots or onboard systems about the aircraft’s actual position or altitude. Such interference poses a serious safety hazard, particularly during landing. The minister’s statement follows multiple reports of spoofing from aircraft approaching Delhi, where navigation systems displayed false locations as far as 60 nautical miles away, prompting some flights to divert.

“Some flights reported GPS spoofing in the vicinity of Indira Gandhi International Airport while using GPS-based landing procedures for runway 10. Contingency procedures were used for the affected flights,” Naidu said. He noted that flight operations continued smoothly as the opposite runway ends, equipped with conventional navigational aids, remained functional.

The Airports Authority of India has asked the WMO to identify the source of interference. “During the high-level meeting, WMO was directed to mobilise additional resources to trace the spoofing source based on preliminary location details shared by DGCA and AAI,” the minister said.

Reporting spoofing has been mandatory since a DGCA circular issued in November 2023. Following last month’s Delhi incident, the regulator instructed pilots, airlines and air traffic controllers to report any spoofing event within ten minutes. Naidu added that, since the 2023 directive, similar reports have emerged from airports in Kolkata, Amritsar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai.

To minimise disruption, the Government continues to retain a minimum operational network of conventional ground-based navigation and surveillance systems. The minister further stated that global cybersecurity threats to aviation increasingly involve ransomware and malware, and that the Airports Authority of India is strengthening its systems by deploying advanced cybersecurity tools across its IT infrastructure.