Flights approaching Delhi and several other major airports across India have reported repeated instances of Global Positioning System (GPS) spoofing and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference over the past year, the government informed Parliament on Monday.
The disclosure, made by civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, underscores growing concerns over satellite-based navigation vulnerabilities.
Naidu said that since the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) made reporting mandatory in November 2023, authorities have been receiving “regular reports” of GPS jamming or spoofing from airports in Kolkata, Amritsar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai.
Responding to questions raised by MP S. Niranjan Reddy, the minister confirmed that some aircraft on satellite-guided approaches to Runway 10 at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) had encountered spoofed GPS signals.
“Contingency procedures were immediately activated, and operations using ground-based navigation systems on other runways continued without interruption,” he said.
Earlier, the DGCA had tightened safety protocols to counter such interference. Along with an advisory issued last year, a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) dated 10 November, 2025 requires pilots and air traffic controllers to report abnormal GPS behaviour within 10 minutes.
The aviation ministry said India maintains a minimum operating network of conventional navigation and surveillance systems to provide reliable backup during satellite outages.
Aircraft flying within a 60-nautical-mile radius of Delhi experienced “severe” spoofing episodes over a week in November, generating false positional data and misleading terrain warnings, The Hindu reported, quoting ATC sources.
In several cases, ATC had to step in with direct navigation instructions.
GPS interference is more commonly seen near India’s borders with Pakistan and Myanmar, but such activity over the capital is unusual, multiple media reports stated, quoting unnamed officials.
Aviation bodies such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) have warned that GPS spoofing poses a rising threat to flight safety.
IATA data shows that cases of GPS signal loss jumped by 220 per cent between 2021 and 2024, with hotspots in western Russia and northern Iraq.
India has also seen a surge in such incidents. The civil aviation ministry told Parliament earlier this year that 465 cases of interference were reported in border regions, primarily around Amritsar and Jammu, between November 2023 and February 2025, averaging nearly one event a day.
The government said it is adopting ICAO and EU Safety Agency best practices, and airlines have been directed to establish their own SOPs and file bi-monthly reports on GPS spoofing events.