TTCAA extends airspace warning as GNSS interference continues

Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­[email protected]

On De­cem­ber 10, 2025, a Caribbean Air­lines air­craft en­route to Trinidad en­coun­tered GPS jam­ming while prepar­ing to land at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. The in­ter­fer­ence ren­dered blocked GPS sig­nals, forc­ing the pi­lots to switch to back­up sys­tems. The air­craft land­ed safe­ly min­utes lat­er. It’s one of sev­er­al in­ci­dents of de­lib­er­ate GNSS (Glob­al Nav­i­ga­tion Satel­lite Sys­tem) In­ter­fer­ence record­ed over the last few months. Though it does not pose a safe­ty risk to pas­sen­gers, pi­lots have re­port­ed en­coun­ter­ing de­lib­er­ate GNSS In­ter­fer­ence, main­ly jam­ming, at an in­creased rate while fly­ing in the re­gion.

GPS jam­ming & in­ter­fer­ence map dat­ed Jan­u­ary 22, 2026. Im­age: Fligh­tRadar24

The Trinidad & To­ba­go Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (TTCAA) be­gan warn­ing op­er­a­tors about pos­si­ble GNSS in­ter­fer­ence around both Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and the A.N.R. Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al when the Unit­ed States be­gan its pres­sure cam­paign against Venezuela last year. On Jan­u­ary 19, the TTCAA is­sued yet an­oth­er No­tice to Air­men (NO­TAM) warn­ing of pos­si­ble GNSS in­ter­fer­ence ef­fec­tive un­til Feb­ru­ary 19. T&T’s air­space re­mains open. The US-based Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA) al­so is­sued new NO­TAMs for oth­er parts of the re­gion with sim­i­lar warn­ings of GNSS in­ter­fer­ence. Those NO­TAMs are in ef­fect un­til March 17.

De­spite the rise in in­ci­dents, the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA) is re­as­sur­ing pas­sen­gers that it is safe to trav­el through the re­gion. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at IA­TA’s Glob­al Me­dia Day in Switzer­land in De­cem­ber, IA­TA Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent of Op­er­a­tions, Safe­ty, and Se­cu­ri­ty, Nick Ca­reen, ex­plained that while GNSS in­ter­fer­ence is rel­a­tive­ly new to the re­gion, it is com­mon in oth­er parts of the world, es­pe­cial­ly con­flict zones. There are two types of GNSS in­ter­fer­ence - spoof­ing and jam­ming. Ca­reen ex­plained that they af­fect air­craft in dif­fer­ent ways. “Jam­ming es­sen­tial­ly makes [the sys­tems] un­us­able. So, it doesn't work. Spoof­ing tells you you're some­where you aren't. It's ba­si­cal­ly giv­ing you an er­ro­neous po­si­tion­ing,” he said.

Though it may sound wor­ry­ing, com­mer­cial pi­lots are trained to han­dle these events. Dur­ing GNSS in­ter­fer­ence events, pi­lots can no longer use da­ta from satel­lites. In­stead, they switch to us­ing ground-based da­ta sources, which re­quire dif­fer­ent pro­ce­dures and in­crease the work­load in the cock­pit. “It re­sults in man­u­al process­es in the cock­pit that we would much pre­fer to avoid. And there is re­dun­dan­cy on the air­craft to deal with it. Ob­vi­ous­ly, you much pre­fer au­toma­tion. But if and when it does hap­pen, pi­lots are pre­pared and trained to deal with it," Ca­reen said. “It doesn't make us any less safe. It's a safe­ty risk, but not some­thing that con­sumers should be con­cerned about in terms of their own safe­ty." Ca­reen re­as­sured.

Still, IA­TA has called for ac­tion on the is­sue, urg­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ICAO) mem­ber states and stake­hold­ers to prompt­ly im­ple­ment “ef­fec­tive mea­sures to mit­i­gate” the risks. Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from IA­TA's Glob­al Avi­a­tion Da­ta Man­age­ment Flight Da­ta eX­change (GADM FDX), the num­ber of glob­al po­si­tion­ing sys­tem (GPS) sig­nal loss events in­creased by 220% be­tween 2021 and 2024. At ICAO's 41st As­sem­bly, the ICAO Coun­cil was in­struct­ed to de­vel­op a ded­i­cat­ed work pro­gramme on con­flict zones and to up­date ICAO guid­ance, in­clud­ing the Risk As­sess­ment Man­u­al for Civ­il Air­craft Op­er­a­tions Over or Near Con­flict Zones.

In the mean­time, air­lines have tak­en steps to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of in­ter­fer­ence events, in­clud­ing rerout­ing flights to avoid Venezue­lan air­space and load­ing ex­tra fu­el in case a di­ver­sion is re­quired.