TORONTO — Pilots aboard a WestJet Boeing 737 MAX 8 reported an in-flight Global Positioning System (GPS) data discrepancy during an early-morning approach into Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) on Wednesday.
Flight WS652 had departed Calgary International Airport (YYC) on Tuesday evening, September 15, bound for Toronto. Nearly three hours into the cross-country flight, as the aircraft was maneuvering on approach into Toronto, the flight crew logged indications of a system anomaly affecting the plane’s navigation equipment.
According to flight log entries recorded at approximately 04:20 UTC, the flight crew alerted maintenance teams on the ground after noticing simultaneous “GPS LEFT” and “GPS RIGHT” invalid indications.
The aircraft involved in the incident, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 registered as C-GEWJ, landed safely at Toronto Pearson. While the exact operational impact during the approach remains unclear, modern commercial airliners utilize redundant navigation suites including Inertial Reference Systems (IRS) allowing aircraft to navigate safely even when primary GPS signals experience degraded or invalid data.
The crew proactively notified ground crews so that maintenance personnel could perform diagnostics and address the logging errors before the aircraft’s next scheduled departure. WestJet has not reported any injuries or secondary operational disruptions stemming from the event.
