Government confirms GPS spoofing near Delhi airport in Parliament
The Ministry of Civil Aviation has confirmed incidents of GPS spoofing and GNSS interference at Delhi and other major airports across India. The confirmation was made by Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu in a written reply to Parliament on Monday. The minister said that since the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) mandated reporting such cases in November 2023, regular reports have been received from several major airports, including Kolkata, Amritsar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai.
GPS spoofing incidents reported near Delhi's IGIA
Naidu revealed that some flights approaching the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in New Delhi faced GPS spoofing while using satellite-based landing procedures on Runway 10. However, operations on other runways that rely on conventional ground-based navigation systems remained unaffected. To mitigate such threats, the DGCA issued an advisory circular in November 2023 and a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on November 10, 2025.
SOP mandates immediate reporting of abnormal GPS behavior
The SOP mandates immediate reporting by pilots and air traffic controllers on detecting abnormal GPS behavior. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has also sought assistance from the Wireless Monitoring Organisation (WMO) to trace the source of interference. At a recent high-level meeting, WMO was directed to deploy additional resources and utilize approximate spoofing-location data provided by DGCA and AAI for signal origin tracking.
Cybersecurity measures bolstered amid aviation sector threats
Naidu also underscored wider cybersecurity threats to the aviation sector, such as ransomware and malware targeting critical systems. To tackle these threats, AAI is implementing advanced cybersecurity solutions across its IT networks and infrastructure. These measures are in line with guidelines from the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).