NEW DELHI: The over a month-long West Asia conflict is having an unintended consequence – civil aviation flights from India operated in the UAE air space are frequently flying a bit off track due to the tactics deployed by the warring countries. This is making them travel a bit longer, resulting in waste of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) and potentially endangering passenger safety, sources said.
Global Positioning System (GPS) spoofing, which involves tampering with the navigation signals of a vehicle to misdirect it from its original path, has surged manifold. A senior official of the Airport Authority of India, which controls the Air Traffic Control (ATC) centres, and multiple sources from airlines in India confirmed that they are battling against this hazard in the skies.
“With Iran, Israel and Iraq air space off limits for airlines presently, many airlines in India operate flights on and off to the UAE region, including to Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah airports. The flights primarily encounter GPS spoofing there,” an airline official told this newspaper.
He said this was a tactic now adopted by many nations to safeguard their own skies. “They want to divert the GPS system of drones as well as missiles and hence put in place massive spoofing technologies. This ends up misguiding civilian planes flying in the airspace,” he added.
The official said pilots are able to take back their flights to safety after switching over to the manual process. “When it comes to my airline, I will not call spoofing a big threat to passenger safety. However, they end up delaying the journey for everyone on board as well as adding expenses to each trip due to the extra fuel used because of the wrong route taken,” he said. A senior AAI official confirmed that they were observing a surge in flights going off track a bit and getting back to the original route later.
During a summit in Montreal last year, International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) General Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar had said, “Radio Navigation Satellite Service interference can impact aircraft operations far beyond the immediate affected area, creating potential safety risks across multiple flight regions.” He said ICAO was working with its members to implement protective measures through aviation safety frameworks and standards.
Aviation enthusiast Shardul Chauhan, who witnessed multiple instances of GPS spoofing through flight tracking platforms, said, “GPS spoofing is a reality which spans land, air and now the seas. It is used by state and non-state actors to mislead aircraft, drones, ships and weapons.”