Narrative:

While enroute to abq international; abq center advised us that white sands was conducting a test/exercise that may affect our GPS navigation. About that time; we received an 'ATC fault' EICAS message and the transponder had a 'fail' light illuminated. ATC stated that was related to the exercise/test and that they still were receiving our normal transponder information. They further stated they would provide us with vectors if we lost GPS navigation capability. None was required because our GPS navigation on the KRKEE1 arrival appeared normal with no EICAS advisories. Abq was landing with runway 26 as the primary; so we requested the RNAV visual 26 once we had the airport in sight. As we approached stiki; we received a 'terrain pos' EICAS message and all terrain information disappeared from our HSI map display. We thought this was related to the GPS jamming exercise and informed abq approach that we wanted to discontinue the approach to runway 26. We requested and executed an uneventful visual approach to runway 21. I can only assume that we lost our terrain information because of the white sands test. We feel that white sands picked a very bad time to test their GPS jamming capabilities; especially considering abq is one of those airports where mountainous terrain is a major concern to all arriving and departing aircraft. We would hope that all future testing would occur when abq intl is in daylight; VMC conditions. To do otherwise is unnecessarily risking an aircraft to inadvertently fly into the surrounding terrain.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air Carrier flight crew reports loss of GPS navigation capability due to military jamming; approaching ABQ at night.

Narrative: While enroute to ABQ International; ABQ Center advised us that White Sands was conducting a test/exercise that may affect our GPS navigation. About that time; we received an 'ATC Fault' EICAS message and the transponder had a 'fail' light illuminated. ATC stated that was related to the exercise/test and that they still were receiving our normal transponder information. They further stated they would provide us with vectors if we lost GPS navigation capability. None was required because our GPS navigation on the KRKEE1 arrival appeared normal with no EICAS advisories. ABQ was landing with Runway 26 as the primary; so we requested the RNAV visual 26 once we had the airport in sight. As we approached STIKI; we received a 'Terrain Pos' EICAS message and all terrain information disappeared from our HSI map display. We thought this was related to the GPS jamming exercise and informed ABQ Approach that we wanted to discontinue the approach to Runway 26. We requested and executed an uneventful visual approach to Runway 21. I can only assume that we lost our terrain information because of the White Sands test. We feel that White Sands picked a very bad time to test their GPS jamming capabilities; especially considering ABQ is one of those airports where mountainous terrain is a major concern to all arriving and departing aircraft. We would hope that all future testing would occur when ABQ Intl is in daylight; VMC conditions. To do otherwise is unnecessarily risking an aircraft to inadvertently fly into the surrounding terrain.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.