Many reports simply say the signal was lost for a time and then returned - with flight crew either falling back on other navigation techniques or asking air traffic control for guidance.

In around 50 cases, no immediate explanation is given for the malfunction. The vast majority of incidents involve GPS-based navigation systems either experiencing a total loss of signal or - more alarmingly - misreporting the aircraft’s position. So what kind of incidents are we talking about, and what impact are they having on modern commercial and private aviation? That’s 77 occurrences of GPS failure in three and a half years - each one of a magnitude that made the professionals involved feel it was worth reporting to a voluntary, anonymous database. In the first half of 2016, 13 incidents had been reported In 2013, pilots reported 11 incidents of GPS interference or malfunction I was entirely unprepared for the sheer number of GPS-related incidents that I found - and very intrigued to note that they have generally been increasing year on year. When I started looking through the NASA-run database, I was expecting to come across a handful of incidents that we might be able to turn into test cases. By understanding real-world conditions that affect GPS reception, we can create test scenarios that help manufacturers and end-users understand how GPS-dependent systems cope with interference.

My job at Spirent is to study threats to GPS and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). But for those of us who work in GPS cybersecurity, the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), an online database of incidents experienced by aviation professionals, has a very different story to tell.Īnd right now, it’s telling us that GPS interference is a big and growing problem for commercial and private aviation in the United States and elsewhere. It’s a site that fans of unexplained mysteries like to trawl for reports of UFO sightings. Incident reports filed by aviation professionals to the online Aviation Safety Reporting System suggest GPS interference is getting worse.

Air navigation gps