It seems that the joint efforts of airport authorities, the civic body and forest department have brought some good results as far as bird-hit incidents at the city's airport are concerned.
It seems that the joint efforts of airport authorities, the civic body and forest department have brought some good results as far as bird-hit incidents at the city's airport are concerned. The airport authorities claim a decline of 26% in bird hits in the past eight months this year as compared to the same period in the previous year.
In the quarterly meeting of Airfield Environment Management Committee (AEMC) on Thursday at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International (SVPI) airport, officials discussed the situation of animal menace. It was claimed that by August 2011 a total of 14 cases of bird hits were reported, which is 26% less than the previous year's number of 19 cases (reported from January to August 2010).
"The situation is in control compared to last year. In fact, in August this year, we didn't have any bird hit incident. Further, there was not a single go-around incident (when a plane has to circle the airport waiting for the runway to be cleared) reported at the airport.
For the past few months, even the monkey menace is in control. We have already installed a 750-metre-long solar powered electric wire fence to keep monkeys away from the airport," said an airport official. However, despite the decline, the chance of tiny birds hitting the gargantuan aircrafts still looms large. The Gujarat Ecological Education & Research (GEER) Foundation's study has found high concentration of black kites in Juhapura (1811 birds), Geeta Mandir (542 birds), airport (464 birds), Ellisbridge (375 birds) and Nehru Bridge (353 birds) areas. "These birds stray around the airport, mainly in Meghaninagar, Kubernagar and Kotarpur areas, and are attracted by potential meals in the form of reptiles, amphibians, rodents and insects there. A study is being done to find out the breeding grounds and figure out where the bird population grows," airport officials said. For this purpose, the cantonment board was requested to shift the butchery and dust-bins from their area.
Airport officials said there is a need to fell all the trees adjacent to the airport boundary wall to prevent monkeys from entering the premises.
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