The VOR Minimum Operational Network, the Ground Stations the FAA Is Switching Off, and Why the FAA Is Keeping Just Enough of Them Alive to Get You Home When GPS Quits

SUMMARY: The FAA is shutting down about a third of U.S. VOR stations but keeping ~590 as a GPS backup network for when satellite navigation fails.

The FAA is decommissioning roughly one-third of the nation’s VOR ground stations, drawing the fleet down from more than 800 stations to about 590. This program, called the VOR Minimum Operational Network (MON), is not the end of ground-based navigation - it is a deliberate decision to keep a skeleton network alive as a backup for the day GPS fails. For any pilot who flies IFR, it means the VOR in your panel is no longer a relic; it is your independent fallback when satellites get jammed, spoofed, or lost.

What Is the VOR Minimum Operational Network?

VOR stands for Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range. It’s a ground station - often a small white building topped by a fixture shaped like an upside-down bowl - that broadcasts a signal in every direction across 360 radials, like spokes on a wheel. Your receiver reads which radial you’re on, and by stringing stations together with a chart, you can navigate the country airway by airway. The low-altitude Victor airways are literally lines drawn from one VOR to the next.

The United States began building this network in the 1950s, and at its peak there were well over 1,000 VOR stations across the country. For decades this web was the backbone of instrument flying. If you flew IFR in 1990, you flew VOR to VOR to VOR.

The Minimum Operational Network is the FAA’s plan to decommission a large share of those stations to save money while keeping enough of them, in the right places, to form a usable safety net - just enough ground-based navigation to get an airplane down safely if the satellite picture goes dark.

Why Is the FAA Shutting Down VOR Stations?

The arrival of GPS changed the math. Satellite navigation is more accurate, doesn’t depend on line of sight to a distant station, and gives a direct course from anywhere to anywhere rather than only along published airways. GPS also made instrument approaches possible at thousands of small airports that could never have justified a ground-based approach of their own. By the 2010s, most pilots navigated by satellite and only glanced at the VOR needle out of habit or on a checkride.

Meanwhile, the VOR fleet aged. Many stations run on decades-old electronics that cost real money to maintain, inspect, flight-check, and keep certified, and spare parts get harder to find every year. With most of the flying public already on GPS, the agency asked the obvious question: why spend millions annually to keep hundreds of beacons on the air that almost nobody uses to navigate?

The answer wasn’t to shut them all off. It was to keep a minimum network.

How Many VOR Stations Are Being Decommissioned?

The plan draws the fleet down from more than 800 stations to roughly 590 - switching off about a third of them. Each shutdown goes through a formal process: public notice, a comment period, and then a date when the transmitter goes quiet for good and the Morse identifier stops chirping in your headset.

The program kicked off in 2016 and has been rolling out in phases ever since. Some stations pilots used for years have already gone dark; others are on the list but still transmitting. Every so often the FAA publishes another batch. If you fly in that region, one day you go to tune a familiar station and it simply isn’t there - the chart already warned you, if you read the notices.

Why Keep Any VORs at All If GPS Is Better?

One word: jamming.

GPS has one deep, structural weakness. The signal reaching your antenna is extraordinarily faint - a whisper from satellites roughly 12,000 miles up - and a faint signal is easy to overpower. It can be jammed deliberately by someone on the ground with the wrong equipment. It can be spoofed, which is worse, where a false signal convinces your receiver it’s somewhere it isn’t. And it can simply drop out due to space weather, such as a solar event disturbing the ionosphere.

This is not theoretical. For the last couple of years, pilots flying near conflict zones have dealt with widespread GPS jamming and spoofing. Airliners over the Middle East and Eastern Europe have had navigation systems suddenly insist they were dozens of miles from their true position - common enough now that it has its own place in international safety bulletins. Even domestically, the military conducts GPS interference testing in certain areas, and the FAA publishes notices when it does, because inside those test areas your GPS can and will drop out.

What Is the FAA’s Coverage Goal for the MON?

The design goal is specific: keep enough VOR stations on the air that any aircraft anywhere in the continental United States at or above 5,000 feet above ground level can always receive at least one VOR. Beyond mere coverage, the surviving network is built so a pilot can navigate to a “safe landing” - an airport with a ground-based instrument approach - without needing GPS at all. If the satellites fail, you can still shoot a conventional approach and get on the ground.

What Does the VOR MON Mean for IFR Pilots?

This affects everyone who flies IFR, from a Cessna 172 with a single nav radio up to a jet. The real change isn’t about the stations - it’s about what the FAA is quietly telling you to keep in your airplane and in your head.

If you fly GPS-only IFR, this program draws a line under an assumption: GPS can fail, and you need a plan for when it does. Regulations already require that if you file and fly IFR on GPS, you have a way to complete the flight if GPS quits. The MON guarantees a VOR will be within reach to make that true - but only if you still carry a VOR receiver and know how to use it. If your panel has no VOR capability at all, you need a concrete loss-of-GPS plan: radar vectors from a controller, or a nearby airport in visual conditions. Answer that before the tanks are dry, not after.

Watch the equipment currency trap. A VOR receiver used under IFR must be checked for accuracy every 30 days - the VOR check. You can use a VOT test signal, a designated ground or airborne checkpoint, or a dual-VOR cross-check, logging the date, place, bearing error, and your signature. But as stations disappear, so do some of the ground and airborne checkpoints tied to them. The very tool you’re keeping as your GPS backup can quietly go out of currency because your usual check went off the air. Look up your VOR check before you go; don’t assume it’s still published.

Expect approaches and airways to change. As VORs come down, the VOR approaches built on them come down too - approaches that used a station as the final approach fix or missed approach holding point - and airways get restructured. Plates have been changing faster than usual because of this program. A chart from three years ago may show an approach that no longer legally exists. Always fly the current chart.

Can You Still Fly a Raw VOR Radial by Hand?

This is the part that matters most. A whole generation of sharp pilots trained on glass, where the magenta line has always been there - and the entire point of the MON is the day the magenta line isn’t. If you can’t look at a VOR needle, determine which radial you’re on, intercept the one you want, and track it in the wind to a station and down an approach, then the FAA can keep every one of those 590 stations humming and it won’t save you. The network is the backup; you are the one who has to fly it.

Here’s the practical move. Next time you’re up on a nice day with an instructor or safety pilot, turn off the GPS - or imagine it’s gone - and fly a VOR radial. Intercept it, track it, and fly a VOR approach down to the numbers. Find out honestly whether that skill is still sharp or has gone soft since your instrument checkride. The FAA is holding up its end by keeping the stations lit. Your end is being able to use them.

Why This Matters for Pilots

The MON is resilience, not nostalgia. The easy path would have been to declare GPS good enough and rip out the whole ground network to save every dollar. Instead, the FAA kept a deliberate, engineered fallback - a completely independent, ground-based way to get an airplane down. In a world watching what jamming and spoofing do to satellite navigation overseas, that second, separate leg for the system to stand on is good engineering and good policy. But a backup you can’t operate isn’t a backup; it’s just a white building on a hill. Keep your piece of it.

Key Takeaways

• The FAA is decommissioning about one-third of U.S. VOR stations, reducing the fleet from over 800 to roughly 590 under the VOR Minimum Operational Network, a program that began in 2016.
• The network is deliberately spaced so aircraft at or above 5,000 feet AGL can always receive at least one VOR and navigate to a ground-based approach without GPS.
• The MON exists because GPS can be jammed, spoofed, or lost - real threats already affecting flights over the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
• IFR pilots must keep a VOR receiver current (checked every 30 days) and verify their VOR check facility still exists, since some checkpoints are disappearing with the stations.
• The stations are only half the backup - hand-flying a raw VOR radial and approach is a skill you must keep sharp.