The government confirmed on Monday that multiple major airports across India, including Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, have reported incidents of Global Positioning System (GPS) spoofing and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference last month. However, the government maintained that these incidents had no impact on flight operations.
Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu addressed the issue in the Rajya Sabha, detailing the measures being taken to mitigate the cyber threat.
Spoofing at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA)
Minister Naidu confirmed that flights reported GPS spoofing while approaching IGIA, New Delhi, specifically while utilizing satellite-based landing procedures on Runway 10.
- Impact Management: The Minister stated that contingency procedures were immediately used for the affected flights. Crucially, he noted that the interference did not affect flight movements on other runway ends, which rely on conventional ground-based navigational aids that were fully operational.
- What is Spoofing? GPS spoofing is a deliberate and sophisticated attempt to feed aircraft false but convincing navigation data. Unlike jamming (which floods the spectrum and causes signal loss), spoofing tricks the aircraft’s systems into calculating an incorrect position, speed, or time.
Widespread Interference Reports
The Minister informed the House that following a directive issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in November 2023 to report all GNSS interference incidents, reports have been consistently received from several major aviation hubs across the country.
GNSS interference reports have been received from the following major airports:
- Delhi (IGIA)
- Mumbai
- Bengaluru
- Kolkata
- Amritsar
- Hyderabad
- Chennai
Government Action and Countermeasures
The Ministry of Civil Aviation and its associated bodies have taken several steps to investigate the source of the interference and strengthen navigational integrity:
- Source Identification: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has requested the Wireless Monitoring Organisation (WMO), which operates under the Department of Telecommunications, to help identify the source of the spoofing. The WMO has been directed to mobilize additional resources to trace the origin based on approximate location details shared by the DGCA and AAI.
- Protocol Tightening: Amid the recent occurrences, the DGCA issued a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on November 10, 2025, specifically for real-time reporting of GPS spoofing events around the Delhi airport, mandating pilots and air traffic controllers to report incidents within 10 minutes.
- Conventional Backup: India continues to maintain a Minimum Operating Network (MON) of conventional (ground-based) navigation and surveillance infrastructure, a global best practice that ensures safety even if satellite signals are compromised.
- Cybersecurity: To address wider global threats like ransomware and malware, the AAI is implementing advanced cybersecurity solutions for its IT networks and critical infrastructure, following guidelines from CERT-In and NCIIPC.
The government acknowledged that while spoofing poses a grave threat to flight safety by potentially causing route or altitude errors, the existing conventional systems successfully served as a reliable backup during these incidents.