Image: GPS Spoofing near Delhi on 5 Nov 2025 displayed on GPS Wise (https://gpswise.aero/)
What’s new: Significant GPS spoofing and air traffic disruption in and around India’s capital.
Why it’s important:
- Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi is India’s busiest serving almost 80,000,000 passengers in the last 12 months.
- GPS spoofing makes passengers and crews less safe, and the aviation system less efficient.
- GPS-based instrument approaches seem to be an important part of the airport’s landing scheme.
What else to know:
- This is not spillover. While Delhi is closer to Pakistan than many parts of India, it is certainly not on the border. Nor could it be considered a conflict zone. A close look at patterns for both jamming and spoofing shows two distinct areas – one along the border with Pakistan, and another at Delhi.
- The Times of India reported spoofing impacting aviation in other non-conflict parts of the country in March of this year.
- ILS systems are important landing aids and better/safer than GPS-based approaches. Seems like in this case the ILS was the primary and GPS approaches were the backup…
GPS spoofing strikes Delhi airport: Disruptive signals force flight diversions, pilots warned
Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) is working to promulgate the new ILS on runway 10/28, a move that would render aircraft less dependent on vulnerable GPS signals.
A new and disruptive wave of GPS spoofing is causing significant navigation issues for aircraft approaching India’s busiest airport, leading to flight diversions and congestion, according to a TOI report.
Over the past two to three days, Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in New Delhi has for the first time experienced widespread spoofing, which corrupts satellite signals and provides pilots with dangerously false location data. The problem is most acute when winds blow from the east, forcing aircraft to use approaches from the Dwarka side.
The issue has been compounded by the ongoing closure of the main runway’s Instrument Landing System (ILS). Runway 10/28, the airport’s primary airstrip, is currently undergoing an upgrade to Category III status to improve its fog-landing capabilities. Without the ground-based ILS to guide them, pilots have been relying on a satellite-dependent technology known as ‘Required Navigation Performance’ (RNP).
This reliance has become a critical vulnerability. The spoofing begins to affect aircraft approximately 60 nautical miles from the airport, disrupting movement on the main runway. The congestion comes at a time of record traffic for IGIA, which is handling up to 1,550 daily aircraft movements.
The real-world impact was starkly demonstrated on Tuesday night, when five IndiGo and two Air India flights were among those forced to divert to Jaipur after being unable to land safely in Delhi.
