An Embraer Legacy 650 nearly drifted into Iranian airspace—near a missile base—after yet another GPS spoofing incident, one of now 20 tracked, along the border.
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The FAA last night issued a warning to operators of “safety of flight risk to civil aviation operations” in light of the growing number of GPS spoofing incidences along a flight path through Iraq alongside the Iranian border, according to the Ops Group.
Earlier this week, the Ops Group alerted that it had tracked incidents where fake GPS signals were transmitted to about a dozen business jets and airliners traveling along airway UM688, and many of them lost navigation capability.
Since then, Ops Group said it continues to receive such reports—with the number growing to 20 of nearly identical situations. “The impact of the nav failures is becoming clearer, with one operator almost entering Iranian airspace without clearance, and another left requiring ATC vectors all the way to their destination in Doha,” the operational specialist said.
One such report came from an Embraer Legacy 650 flying from Europe to Dubai, telling Ops Group that it lost GPS in the aircraft and on both iPads; additionally, intertial reference system (IRS) navigation failed. They realized that there was an issue when the “autopilot started turning to the left and right, so it was obvious that something was wrong,” the crew reported. Shortly after, the crew received error messages. When they requested radar vectors, the aircraft was shown to be 80 nm off track.
A Bombardier Challenger 604 crew also required vectors from Iraq to Doha. According to Ops Group, the crew detailed: “Nearing north of Baghdad something happened where we must have been spoofed. We lost anything related to nav, and the IRS suggested we had drifted by 70 to 90 miles.”
Ops Group emphasized the security risk with these failures, given that Iran has two large missile bases just over the border. And while the incidents can be resolved with ATC help, any sort of other failure could make the workload extreme.
Increasing Fake GPS Signals Near Iran Prompt FAA Alert
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The FAA last night issued a warning to operators of “safety of flight risk to civil aviation operations” in light of the growing number of GPS spoofing incidences along a flight path through Iraq alongside the Iranian border, according to Ops Group.
Earlier this week, Ops Group alerted that it had tracked incidents of fake GPS signals transmitted to 12 business jets and airliners traveling along airway UM688, and many lost navigation capability.
Since then, Ops Group said it continues to receive such reports—with the number growing to 20. “The impact of the nav failures is becoming clearer, with one operator almost entering Iranian airspace without clearance, and another left requiring ATC vectors all the way to their destination in Doha."
One such report came from an Embraer Legacy 650 flying from Europe to Dubai, telling Ops Group that it lost GPS in the aircraft and on both iPads; additionally, inertial reference system (IRS) navigation failed. When they requested radar vectors, the aircraft was shown to be 80 nm off track.
A Bombardier Challenger 604 crew also required vectors from Iraq to Doha. According to Ops Group, the crew detailed: “Nearing north of Baghdad something happened where we must have been spoofed. We lost anything related to nav and the IRS suggested we had drifted by 70 to 90 miles.”