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What’s new: Another instance of a commercial aircraft having a false terrain warning, undoubtedly due to GPS interference.
Why it’s important: The impacted aircraft was grounded for a week after the incident.
From a larger perspective this is bad for a host of reasons including:
- Pilots can become accustomed to false warnings and ignore real ones
- It adds to pilot /crew workload
- It reduces confidence in aircraft systems and and delay reaction times
- GPS interference impacts numerous applications and systems on a commercial aircraft
What else to know: Last year OpsGroup reported that impacted aircraft systems included:
- Flight Management System (FMS)
- Inertial Reference System (IRS)
- GPS Receiver
- Weather Radar
- Aircraft Clock
- Datalink Communications
- Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS)
- Navigation Displays and Autopilot Inputs
The report emphasized that GPS spoofing can corrupt data across multiple systems simultaneously, sometimes without alerting the flight crew. One of the most alarming findings was that EGPWS may continue to malfunction even after GPS coverage is restored, leading to a surge in false alerts and undermining terrain avoidance protocols.
Opsgroup also raised 33 specific safety concerns, with the greatest being the risk of Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) due to degraded warning systems.
Incident: Supernova B738 near Tel Aviv on Jul 27th 2025, double GPS failure causes “Pull Up!”
| By Simon Hradecky, created Thursday, Aug 21st 2025 18:09Z, last updated Thursday, Aug 21st 2025 18:09Z |
