Safety

GPS jamming and spoofing: what line pilots should know in 2026

June 29, 2026Updated September 28, 20268 min readFor pilots

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In this article

Jamming denies, spoofing deceives
Where it happens
How often: the numbers and what they measure
What it does to the airplane
What regulators and industry have published
What the guidance asks of pilots
Why flight-tracking data needs a sanity check
What LogAloft does with this

Satellite navigation interference is now a routine part of flying near several conflict zones, and it keeps turning up in new places. Jamming takes GPS away. Spoofing is worse, because it can feed the airplane a false position and a false time that linger long after the aircraft leaves the area. Below is what regulators and industry bodies have actually published, what the numbers do and do not show, and where to find the guidance that applies to you.

Jamming denies, spoofing deceives

The FAA's GNSS Interference Resource Guide uses the same definitions as the AIM Pilot/Controller Glossary. Jamming is an emission that does not imitate GNSS signals but stops the receiver from acquiring or tracking them. The result is denial: no GNSS position, navigation or timing.

Spoofing is the transmission of signals that look like real GNSS signals but carry altered position or time. When the false signal is stronger, the receiver accepts it and the navigation system computes a wrong position. The guide notes that jamming is often used first, to knock the receiver off the real signals before the spoofed ones take over.

The practical difference is detection. Jamming produces failure messages, so crews usually know right away. EASA's Safety Information Bulletin points out that no flight deck alert tells you which kind of interference you have, and that spoofing can be harder and slower to spot. The FAA guide puts it plainly: "Spoofing may be so insidious, that pilots may be unaware it is occurring." RAIM will not save you either: the FAA guide states it was never designed to detect spoofing.

Where it happens

The FAA guide's Appendix A lists the areas with the most reported spoofing: the Eastern Mediterranean (Nicosia, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Cairo, Amman and Jeddah FIRs), the Black Sea (Ankara/Istanbul, Sofia, Bucharest), Russia and the Baltic (Moscow, Samara, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Helsinki), the India/Pakistan border, Iraq and Iran, the Korean Peninsula, and the Beijing area. EASA's SIB 2022-02R4, issued July 3, 2026, names the south and eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Middle East, Baltic Sea and the Arctic, and keeps a current FIR list on its GNSS outages page.

The lists lag the reports. SkAI Data Services, which runs the GPSWise tracker, told CNN in April 2026 it had also detected clusters in Myanmar. On the North Pacific routes, crews have reported jamming, and a few cases of possible spoofing, around Kamchatka since June 2026 and around the Kuril Islands since late July, mostly on R220 and R580. OPSGROUP cites FAA data showing more than 100 civil aircraft affected near NUZAN, and an Anchorage NOTAM issued September 18 gives the source as unknown.

The FAA guide warns that interference can reach hundreds of miles beyond a conflict area. In the US, most events have been planned government tests announced in advance, but the guide also describes unplanned interference near Denver and Dallas in 2022. Planned does not mean harmless. On May 14, 2026, an air ambulance King Air crashed near Ruidoso, New Mexico, killing two pilots and two flight nurses, about 14 minutes after the crew told ATC they had lost GPS. The NTSB's preliminary report, as reported by AOPA, notes that a jamming test from White Sands Missile Range covered the area at the time; no probable cause has been determined. And on September 25, 2026, two United crews reported GPS interference departing Los Angeles, AeroTime reported, with the cause not yet known.

How often: the numbers and what they measure

Several figures circulate, and they count different things. Here is what we could trace to the organization that produced them.

Source	What was counted	Figure
IATA 2025 Safety Report (Incident Data eXchange)	Reported GPS spoofing incidents, 2025 vs 2023	up 193%
Same	Reported jamming events, 2025 vs 2023	up 67%
IATA GADM Flight Data eXchange	GPS signal-loss events, 2021 to 2024	up 220%
IATA, September 2024, as cited by the FAA guide	Loss-of-GNSS rate per 1,000 flights, first half 2024 vs 2023	up 65%
OPSGROUP workgroup, September 2024	Flights spoofed per day	about 1,500, up from about 300 in early 2024
FAA guide, Table A-1	Spoofing incidents in the Nicosia FIR, July-August 2024	5,655

The 193% figure is real, but it describes reported incidents in one IATA database, not a measured rate per flight. Reporting habits change as awareness grows, so part of any rise in reports may be more pilots reporting. None of these rows should be compared with one another. What they agree on is direction: more interference, in more places, since 2022.

What it does to the airplane

GPS feeds far more than the FMS. The FAA guide's Table 3-1 and EASA's SIB list effects that line pilots have reported:

Navigation: map shifts, unexpected turns as the autopilot follows a false position, and loss of RNAV/RNP eligibility. Hybrid IRS can be corrupted by spoofed updates.
Terrain alerts: predictive TAWS can issue false PULL UP warnings in cruise, descent and approach. EASA notes some led to high-rate, uncoordinated climbs. Traffic alerts rank below PULL UP, so the FAA warns a false terrain alert can suppress a real TCAS advisory. TCAS RAs themselves do not use GNSS.
Time: a spoofed clock can shift the aircraft time or date, which can lead the ground system to terminate CPDLC connections and discard ADS-C reports.
Wind and groundspeed: erroneous or illogical wind and groundspeed on the ND, and knock-on errors in fuel calculations.
Surveillance: ADS-B Out may broadcast a false position; ADS-B In can show false or missing traffic.
Other: weather radar returns displaced relative to the aircraft, HUD and SVS unreliable, runway awareness alerts wrong.

Persistence is the part that catches crews out. The FAA guide says a receiver can keep producing wrong position and time for hours after leaving the area, and may need a ground or factory reset. TAWS may not recover in flight, so false alerts can come back on approach at a destination far from any interference. For oceanic crews, the guide notes that a low ADS-C figure of merit after spoofing can remove eligibility for reduced separation, and that reporting interference to ATC is a requirement in all FAA-controlled oceanic airspace, wherever in the flight it happened. The Allied Pilots Association reports that degraded navigation performance has forced aircraft off the North Atlantic tracks.

What regulators and industry have published

In the US, the starting point is SAFO 24002 (January 25, 2024), on recognizing and mitigating GPS/GNSS disruptions. The GNSS Interference Resource Guide builds on it: version 1.0 came out in December 2025 and version 1.1 is dated March 12, 2026. The guide is advisory, not regulatory, and defers to the AFM and OEM guidance.

In Europe, EASA's SIB 2022-02R4 replaced R3 of July 2024 and was republished with editorial corrections on July 22, 2026. It adds interim radiotelephony phraseology, guidance on EFB interference maps and training recommendations, none of them mandatory. EASA and EUROCONTROL published a joint action plan on March 26, 2026, aimed at harmonized procedures and phraseology. Earlier, EASA and IATA used a January 2024 workshop to agree on data sharing and on keeping a minimum network of conventional navaids, then published a June 2025 plan built around reporting and monitoring, prevention, infrastructure and airspace management, and coordination.

At the global level, the ICAO Assembly adopted two resolutions on October 3, 2025, condemning GNSS interference originating from North Korea and Russia as infractions of the Chicago Convention.

What the guidance asks of pilots

We don't write procedures. Your company's procedures, your AFM and the OEM's instructions come first. The FAA guide includes sample checklists but labels them generic and advisory. Boiled down, the published guidance asks crews to:

Before flight: know whether the route passes known hot spots, check NOTAMs, plan fuel for contingencies, and identify conventional approaches at the destination and alternates (SAFO 24002). The FAA guide also suggests setting a watch that GPS cannot update.
In flight: watch for changes in ANP/EPU, clock errors, FMS position disagreements, large position jumps and odd wind or groundspeed; cross-check position against conventional navaids; be ready to revert to conventional procedures (SAFO 24002, EASA SIB).
Report: tell ATC promptly, then file a written report at the FAA's Report a GPS Anomaly page. EASA asks for a special AIREP and provides standard phraseology, including a pilot request for a time check.
After flight: enter suspected interference in the maintenance log so the receivers can be checked or reset before the next leg (FAA guide, section 4.11).

Why flight-tracking data needs a sanity check

ADS-B Out reports the position the aircraft's GNSS gives it. When an aircraft is spoofed, that is what goes out over the air. Flightradar24 describes the telltale signs: several aircraft flying perfect circles in the same spot, and a Warsaw to Paris flight that appeared to start inside Kaliningrad. It uses multilateration to replace bad positions where it can, but not every tracker does, and archived tracks can still hold jumps, loops and gaps.

Anything computed from a track inherits its errors: distance flown, time over a fix, or a cosmic radiation dose added up along the path. Dose rate at cruise depends on altitude and geomagnetic latitude; the FAA's AC 120-61B notes galactic cosmic radiation over the poles is about twice that over the geomagnetic equator at the same altitude. A position that jumps hundreds of miles puts part of the flight somewhere it never was. Tracks from interference areas should be checked for implied speeds and jumps no airliner can fly before they are trusted.

What LogAloft does with this

LogAloft works out the dose of each flight along its flown track, using flight-tracking data, and fills gaps in that track, such as over oceans, with the planned route. If the track is spoofed, the dose follows the false positions. If a flight's track looks wrong on the map, open the flight and have LogAloft work out its dose from the route or the two airports instead.

Sources

This is general information, not operating guidance. Your company's procedures, your aircraft's manuals and the regulations come first.