New Delhi, India — Chaos unfolded at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) on Friday, 7 November 2025, as a series of GPS spoofing incidents and a technical malfunction in the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system disrupted over 800 flights, causing widespread delays across India’s airspace and sparking renewed concerns about aviation cybersecurity.
According to a Times of India report, Delhi’s ATC network was hit by multiple GPS spoofing attacks over the past several days, which manipulated satellite navigation data and fed false location signals to aircraft systems.
What is GPS spoofing?
Cybersecurity firm McAfee defines GPS spoofing as a technique where false GPS signals are transmitted to deceive navigation systems, making them believe they are in a different location. The manipulation can cause severe miscommunication between aircraft and ground systems, potentially endangering flight operations.
“This form of cyberattack undermines the reliability of GPS data, which is critical for navigation, time synchronization, and airspace coordination,” McAfee notes. Experts warn that the growing availability of advanced signal transmitters and spoofing software has made such attacks more frequent and harder to detect.
Delhi’s flight disruption
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) said the technical glitch was resolved by Friday evening, but clearing the operational backlog is expected to take time. Adverse eastern wind patterns worsened the disruption, forcing aircraft to change runway approaches — landing from the Dwarka side and taking off from Vasant Kunj — creating additional congestion over the national capital.
A senior government official told The Hindu that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is investigating the spoofing incidents and their link to the large-scale system failure. Some flights reportedly received false navigation data and terrain warnings, raising serious questions about the resilience of India’s ATC infrastructure.
A wake-up call for India’s aviation systems
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, in an August 2025 report, had already urged the government to carry out a time-bound modernization of ATC automation systems, warning that outdated technology could expose critical aviation networks to cyber threats.
Aviation analysts say the Delhi incident underscores the urgent need for a cybersecurity overhaul in India’s aviation sector, as GPS-based systems become increasingly central to flight operations.
“This is no longer a technical glitch — it’s a national security concern,” said a senior aviation safety expert. “If spoofing can disrupt flight paths over the country’s busiest airport, the implications for airspace safety are enormous.”
As investigations continue, the DGCA and AAI are reviewing contingency protocols and exploring enhanced anti-spoofing systems to protect India’s aviation network from future cyber interference.
With over 800 flights delayed or diverted, Friday’s disruption has become one of the largest air traffic breakdowns in India’s history — and a stark reminder of how vulnerable modern aviation has become in the digital age.
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