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What’s new: Reports of commercial airliners’ GPS jammed yesterday near Los Angeles and San Diego. The week before a panel at ION GNSS+ in Orlando, FL warned that GPS spoofing has become a “global aviation disease.”
Why it’s important: GPS interference distracts crews and erodes safety margins. It can alter flight paths and impact a wide range of on-board systems.
What else to know:
- GPS jamming has already led to the death of 38 people aboard an Azerbaijan Air flight and was a factor in the loss of 4 lives in the crash of a medical transport aircraft in New Mexico.
- No other GNSS is currently approved for use in commercial aircraft. Even if it were, it probably would not have made a difference in the Azerbaijan Air and New Mexico incidents because the GNSS frequencies are clustered together and it is easy to jam all of them at the same time. In fact, we understand it is more difficult to jam just one GNSS system and not impact the others.
United Airlines Flights Hit By GPS Jamming Flying Over The Same Major U.S. Airspace
PNT Resilience in Focus as Pilots Warn of Global GPS Spoofing Crisis
ORLANDO, Fla. — Airline pilots and navigation safety researchers warned at the ION GNSS+ 2026 conference that satellite spoofing has evolved from a regional nuisance into a global aviation “disease,” tricking aircraft hardware into issuing false terrain alerts at 41,000 feet and eroding trust in cockpit systems.
During a panel titled “Aviation PNT Risks and Resilience: Experience from the Cockpit,” aviators presented video evidence from an Airbus A350 flight showing onboard systems becoming completely confused mid-flight due to corrupted position, navigation, and timing (PNT) data. Panelists noted that interference originating near conflict zones and Eastern Europe—particularly around the Baltic states and Poland—has expanded worldwide, creating cascades where spoofed signals cause aircraft traffic collision avoidance and terrain systems to issue high-priority pull-up commands at cruising altitudes.
