Electronic warfare spooks airlines, pilots and air-safety officials
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. American Airlines Capt. Dan Carey knew his cockpit equipment was lying to him when an alert began blaring “pull up!" as his Boeing 777 passed over Pakistan in March—at an altitude of 32,000 feet, far above any terrain.
The warning stemmed from a kind of electronic warfare that hundreds of civilian pilots encounter each day: GPS spoofing. The alert turned out to be false but illustrated how fake signals that militaries use to ward off drones and missiles are also permeating growing numbers of commercial aircraft, including U.S. airlines’ international flights.
“It was concerning, but it wasn’t startling, because we were at cruise altitude," Carey said. Had an engine failure or other in-flight emergency struck at the same time, though, the situation “could be extremely dangerous." Pilots, aviation-industry officials and regulators said spoofed Global Positioning System signals are spreading beyond active conflict zones near Ukraine and the Middle East, confusing cockpit navigation and safety systems and taxing pilots’ attention in commercial jets carrying passengers and cargo. The attacks started affecting a large number of commercial flights about a year ago, pilots and aviation experts said.
The number of flights affected daily has surged from a few dozen in February to more than 1,100 in August, according to analyses from SkAI Data Services and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. Modern airliners’ heavy reliance on GPS means that fake data can cascade through cockpit systems, creating glitches that last for a few minutes or an entire flight. Pilots have reported clocks resetting to earlier times, false warnings and misdirected flight paths, according to anonymized reports
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