NEW DELHI: In a rare instance, suspected spoofing of the Global Positioning System (GPS) in India’s borders forced an Air India Express flight carrying 160 passengers from Delhi to Jammu on Monday to return to the Indira Gandhi International Airport after reaching its destination.
The aircraft is reported to have made multiple rounds of circling over the Jammu airspace before returning to Delhi. An alternate flight was arranged from Delhi nearly six hours later, and the flyers reached Jammu well beyond the schedule.
Spoofing is a technique that involves deliberate tampering with the GPS signals, which are crucial for pilots to navigate the aircraft. This malicious act ends up guiding them to false locations.
Flight No. IX 2564 departed from Terminal 3 of IGI at 11.05 am and returned to the starting point at 1.28 pm, reveals flight tracking website, Flightaware. The Airbus 320 had reached up to Jammu but was unable to land there and returned.
In a statement, an Air India Express spokesperson said, “Our Delhi–Jammu flight returned to Delhi as a precautionary measure, following a suspected GPS interference incident. Subsequently, an alternative flight was organised to connect guests to Jammu. We regret the inconvenience caused. Instances of GPS signal interference have been reported by operators while flying over certain sensitive regions.”
It has been understood that since the location bordered Pakistan, the pilot took extreme caution to return rather than end up landing in some spot in the hostile neighbour’s territory.
Aviation expert Captain Mohan Ranganthan told this reporter, “For the last two years, there have been reports of GPS spoofing in places like Pakistan, Iran, some parts of the Middle East and even Myanmar. It often happens in war zones. This kind of spoofing is done deliberately but we cannot say for sure who is involved in it,” he added.