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Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

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Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#51

Post by emilburzo »

I actually experienced GPS spoofing while paragliding near Ukraine, luckily in the daytime. I don't even want to imagine it at night on a rescue mission. Condolences to the occupants.

It's quite easy to say "no big deal" while calm in an office, but it's really different when you're busy flying and then there's the extra workload of trying to understand what's happening, attempting to fix it, and so on. Imagine "debug bug in production while driving a car" for a rough comparison, although I guess planes are probably better equipped for loss of GPS?

https://blog.emilburzo.com/2026/06/gps-spoofing-teleported-m...

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#52

Post by rdtsc »

colechristensen wrote: post #20
mrngld wrote: post #15

When I used to fly in Florida in the 2005-2015ish timeframe, NOTAMs for GPS interference (it didn't say that exactly but that's what it meant) were an everyday occurrence along my path, it became boilerplate. I experienced it a few times. One moment the GPS thinks you're plodding along next to Ocala, next moment it thinks I've teleported a thousand miles away, and then it'd just quit. But that's what we train for. Th…

[flagged]

> Wait for the NTSB report before replying, essentially "get gud"

The preliminary NTSB report points toward “get gud”. If you request a visual approach and then fly into a mountain getting “gud” will be at top of the list.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#53

Post by sokoloff »

plorg wrote: post #49
sokoloff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a judgment issue more than a skill issue. GPS NOTAM'd as unreliable on a dark, moonless night? Fly the ILS approach (or fly a visual approach along the track of the ILS approach backing up your visual with the radio signals). That will give you terrain and obstacle clearance all along the route using locally generated navigation signals that will be entirely unaffected by GPS jamming. https://aeronav.faa.gov/…

Per other comments the ILS approach was not available due to the local weather service being NOTAM'd as unavailable, couldn't set local altitude. The judgment call was effectively whether to take the flight at all, as there was effectively no instrument approach available and the visual conditions precluded VFR.

The ILS approach being not legally usable as an approach due to a missing local altimeter setting does not make it unusable to back up a visual approach [or VFR arrival].

I would 100% (and have) take center's altimeter setting and fly the track of an ILS or localizer rather than "whelp, nothing can be done..." This was VMC; you don't need a local altimeter setting to be safe using the radio navaids; you would need it to legally fly the approach as an ILS approach.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#54

Post by Suzuran »

K0balt wrote: post #17

GPS is not essential to air navigation. It’s nice to have, and there are some approaches that legally require it to be operational in order to fly them (IFR procedures) but aviation has other systems in place to guide aircraft under conditions where visual flight navigation is impossible. In this case, IMHO, the pilots had become complacent and lax in their navigational rigor because of the fact that GPS makes a lot…

Don't worry, our government is doing their level best to make GPS the only option for air navigation. After all, we all know that technology NEVER fails, and the sooner we can turn off all those big bad old ground radars and navigation aids, the sooner we can sell all that real estate and use the money for things that the American public desperately needs, like more corporate bailouts and bathroom security cameras.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#55

Post by rdtsc »

ceejayoz wrote: post #48
jatora wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

HN threads on aviation are always a bit goofy to anyone who's actually flown a plane, yeah.

I never flew a plane just know enough that a visual approach means “visual” rules. Hitting a mountain at that point is hard to argue for blaming anyone else but the pilot error? Did I get it right?

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#56

Post by raverbashing »

colechristensen wrote: post #20
mrngld wrote: post #15

When I used to fly in Florida in the 2005-2015ish timeframe, NOTAMs for GPS interference (it didn't say that exactly but that's what it meant) were an everyday occurrence along my path, it became boilerplate. I experienced it a few times. One moment the GPS thinks you're plodding along next to Ocala, next moment it thinks I've teleported a thousand miles away, and then it'd just quit. But that's what we train for. Th…

[flagged]

Pilots complaining about automation: several

Pilots unable to fly with all the bells and whistles and getting their ass handed to them when anything falls out of the ordinary: too many

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#57

Post by gpm »

1123581321 wrote: post #24
colechristensen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What do you expect might change between the preliminary and the final report?

Well for one I would expect the final report to actually come to any sort of conclusion and not just transcribe the conversations between air traffic control and the plane, and the data recorded by the plane. The preliinary report doesn't support (or contradict) the judgment that the pilots just need to "get gud" at all - it doesn't make that sort of judgment at all.

For another I'd note that past investigations into accidents that at the surface were the pilot making a very bad decision have found a laundry list of underlying causes that need to be fixed. E.g. see Ontario Flight 1363 where the proximate cause was not de-icing a plane that clearly needed de-icing and the root causes after investigation were a whole lot of institutional issues.

And finally at a glance I note that the air traffic control tower appears to have approved this plane flying on instruments, a procedure only allowed when "local altimeter setting [is] received" - apparently referring to GPS. In doing so they had the military disable the jamming. The pilots appear to have communicated to the tower that they would be using that approval until further notice (notice that was anticipated in a couple of minutes). And that the tower apparently without informing the pilots appears to have approved restarting the GPS jamming... I'm not an expert but if I were asked to investigate this (a thing that non-experts are sometimes asked to do, e.g. with the aforementioned flight)... I suggest that this leads to obvious alternate theories of what went wrong such as instruments they had good cause to rely on silently misleading them.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#58

Post by PhaedrusV »

rbanffy wrote: post #30
mrngld wrote: post #15

When I used to fly in Florida in the 2005-2015ish timeframe, NOTAMs for GPS interference (it didn't say that exactly but that's what it meant) were an everyday occurrence along my path, it became boilerplate. I experienced it a few times. One moment the GPS thinks you're plodding along next to Ocala, next moment it thinks I've teleported a thousand miles away, and then it'd just quit. But that's what we train for. Th…

I guess GPS jamming was not routine for them. Had they been aware of any NOTAM regarding GPS interference, they'd be prepared, and, like you said, would have VOR setup prior to leaving the ground.

Checking NOTAMs is important.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#59

Post by gpm »

fusslo wrote: post #44
jcalvinowens wrote: post #3

The preliminary NTSB report: https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/G...

> At 0000:26, the ARTCC controller advised the flight crew that the airplane was at 13,000 ft msl, 1,000 ft above their assigned altitude. The pilot responded that they were correcting their altitude and that the airplane had lost GPS capability. The pilot stated they would need a heading > About 0005 the ARTCC operations supervisor contacted [the military] to stop jamming and at 0007:34 ADS-B data recording returned…

Note that after the pilots said that they could go visual the preliminary report documents the following

> The ARTCC controller subsequently cleared the flight to SRR, cleared the flight for a visual approach, and informed them they could cancel IFR in the air above 9,000 ft msl or they could cancel their clearance via the flight service station after landing. The flight crew acknowledged the clearance and responded that they would cancel IFR “in just a couple of minutes.” There were no additional radio transmissions received from the flight crew.

It's not at all clear to me that they did go visual. They communicated that they intended to cancel instrument clearance later and that suggests they were still using it...

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#60

Post by colechristensen »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #40
colechristensen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your GPS enabled flight computer will indeed yell at you VERY LOUDLY if you're about to hit a mountain. It will not allow you to get particularly close to terrain without noticing.

I'm wondering what they could have done differently here. The report said it was a 0% moonlight night, extremely dark. No exact position from GPS, and visuals on the landing strip. That mountain peak would have likely been invisible from the pilot's seat. What would have been the "skill issue" difference people keep mentioning? It's getting really frustrating how reckless the US military is with the skies. They keep…

>I'm wondering what they could have done differently here.

It appears there were too many sources of confusion. GPS jamming, moonless night, busy ATC, not planning on VFR before takeoff, 20 minute short flight, instrument approach disabled, young pilots, mountains, and perhaps others.

Flight safety is about removing entropy and there were several steps which could have been taken, including not flying at all because of forced VFR on a moonless night near mountains.

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