Wizz Air: New crew procedures helping to cut GPS interference impact

Central European budget carrier Wizz Air has recorded a decline in spurious terrain warnings since implementing defensive crew procedures against GPS spoofing and interference earlier this year. Wizz Air Hungary flight-data monitoring manager Akos Steigervald detailed the carrier’s experience during the annual European Union Aviation Safety Agency conference in Budapest at the end of October. He says the carrier has had to mitigate pilots’ potential loss of trust in aircraft systems, including ‘pull up’ alerts from ground-proximity warning systems. While the carrier had its own processes to help mitigate risks, Steigervald says the new supplementary procedure in the flight crew operating manual, released at the end of June, is demonstrating positive results. Steigervald says the airline initially began noticing GPS jamming in 2020, mainly on outbound services from European bases to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, although the impact was relatively small. But increasing occurrences on these routes, and the interdependency between GPS equipment and other aircraft systems, subsequently resulted in other effects including nuisance alerts from the ground-proximity warning system.<br/>