The incident occurred at Newark Airport after officials from the FAA and the NJ Port Authority struggled for over two years to determine why the new ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) - a system primarily used to expand aircraft take-off and landing systems - there were intermittent failures. The cause of these errors did not seem to be identified.
With the help of the FCC and special equipment, they were finally able to identify the cause of these inexplicable problems: A contractor on site used a GPS jammer that not only blocked the fleet tracking system of his company vehicle, but also the GBAS.
GPS jammers are usually small devices that plug into a vehicle's lighter connector and send radio signals that overdrive or drown out much weaker signals such as GPS or others. Although GPS jammers are illegal in the US, they are readily available online and become more common as the use of fleet management tracking systems increases. These devices may seem relatively harmless at first glance, but their potential for damage is considerable.