NEW DELHI
Flights near Delhi and several other major Indian airports have experienced GPS spoofing and GNSS interference over the past year, the government confirmed in Parliament on Monday. Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu disclosed the information in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, detailing the scope of incidents and ongoing mitigation measures.
The minister said that following a November 2023 directive by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) mandating reporting of GPS jamming or spoofing events, “regular reports are being received from major airports including Kolkata, Amritsar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai.” At Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in New Delhi, some flights approaching Runway 10 using satellite-based landing procedures reported GPS anomalies, prompting activation of contingency protocols. Operations on other runways, relying on conventional ground-based navigation, remained unaffected.
To address GNSS threats, DGCA issued an advisory circular in 2023 and a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on November 10, 2025, mandating real-time reporting of GPS spoofing by pilots and air traffic controllers. India continues to maintain a Minimum Operating Network (MON) of ground-based navigation and surveillance systems to provide reliable backups when satellite navigation is disrupted.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has engaged the Wireless Monitoring Organisation (WMO) to identify the source of interference, mobilising additional resources and analysing approximate spoofing locations shared by DGCA and AAI.
Naidu also highlighted broader cybersecurity risks, including ransomware and malware threats to aviation infrastructure. AAI is implementing advanced cybersecurity solutions under guidelines from the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) and CERT-In. The ministry said these measures are continuously updated, and India actively participates in global aviation-security forums to strengthen preventive and defensive strategies against evolving technological threats.