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On Monday, December 1, the government told the Parliament that in the past 12 months, flights over the Delta of Delhi and other big airports across India have recorded instances of GPS spoofing and interference by the GNSS.

This was disclosed in a written response by the Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu in the Rajya Sabha he provided the magnitude of reported incidents, and what is being done to mitigate the incidents.

Centre confirms GPS Spoofing bid

The minister said the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) needed any case of GPS jamming or spoofing to be reported and therefore, other larger airports in the country were also reporting regularly. These are Kolkata, Amritsar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai airports.

In response to the questions raised by MP, S Niranjan Reddy, Naidu added that satellite based landing operations were being spoofed by certain flights on Runway 10 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in New Delhi.

These flights were put into contingency procedures and he said that nothing was affecting operations on other runways which are run using conventional ground based navigation systems.

To address the risk of GNSS interference, the DGCA has issued an advisory circular in November 2023 and more recently a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), in particular, on real-time reporting of GPS spoofing incidents around IGIA, in November 2025. Pilots and air traffic controllers should report in real time whenever they detect any abnormal GPS behaviour in the SOP.

The ministry says that India continues to operate a Minimum Operating Network (MON) of standard and ground-based navigation and surveillance systems which is being used in accordance with the international best practices. These are systems that will provide a great back up in case the navigation system is compromised by the satellite.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) too sought the help of Wireless Monitoring Organisation (WMO) in assisting them to identify the source of the interference. WMO was ordered to mobilize other resources and make use of the approximate data on the spoofing-location that had been given by the DGCA and the AAI in a top level meeting so that the source of the signals could be traced.

Other cybersecurity threats to aviation that the minister brought to light include the ransomware and malware of vital systems. To curb these threats, AAI is instituting better security measures in its IT networks and systems by installing better cyber-security mechanisms.

hey are conducting such upgrades as per the opportunities provided by the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) and Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

The authorities claim that cybersecurity is constantly underdeveloped and the novelties are being introduced as the threats are evolving. They further said that India is participating in the world aviation-security forums in order to be up to date with the existing technologies and methodologies.

What is GPS spoofing?

According to the information provided by a cybersecurity software company, McAfee, GPS spoofing is a habit of influencing or deceiving a GPS receiver to transmit fake GPS signals.

This is an unethical practice to interfere with the GPS signals to give the incorrect location data to the GPS receiver which may even lead to the location information of the device being at a place that the device is not located.

The cybersecurity software company claims that such an attack on the computer system compromises the efficiency of GPS information which is crucial in most applications, including navigation, time synchronisation, and many others.

The activity has over the years evolved into a menace of GPS spoofing, whereby the vice is now applied in countering the current operations as the malpractice is now readily accessible through the easy access to expensive hardware and software that is capable of transmitting falsified GPS signals.

How does GPS Spoofing work?

GPS spoofing messes with location data by blasting fake signals that drown out the real ones from satellites.

The receiver gets confused and locks onto these stronger, bogus signals, so it spits out the wrong location. Sometimes, it’s as basic as just blasting fake signals into the air.

Other times, attackers get sneaky, they ease the fake signal in, syncing it with the real one before slowly cranking up the power and taking over. Either way, the device ends up lost.

What happened in November 2025?

On Friday, 7 November 2025, at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport of New Delhi, a technical complication occurred that impacted the air traffic control (ATC) system, and as a result, over 800 flight operations were disrupted and triggered delays in the Indian airspace.

Reportedly, the IGI Airport in Delhi had several GPS spoofing attacks in the past few days that helped in the delay in the flight operation.

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