Airport has guns, birds have guts

Apart from severe turbulence and fierce lightning, little birds can bring great jets down — and the Ahmedabad airport teems with birds that are, frighteningly, no longer terrified of sound-making ‘scare guns’. The city airport has gas-powered devices called Zon guns, which produce explosions of sound, to scare away birds from runways and operational areas.

But the feathered intruders have become so accustomed to the supposedly terrorising audio that they go about their business paying as much heed to the distraction as humans would to the noise of traffic.  It is worth mentioning that the Ahmedabad airport is one of the most bird-hit prone airports in the country.

In the circumstances, the airport has been forced to deploy decidedly low-tech solutions: every morning, around 10 people can be seen chasing birds with firecrackers. “We have seen the birds sitting on the guns,” said a source familiar with the airport’s bird-fighting crisis.  “When the gun is fired, they fly off. But after a while, they come back and resume their perch on the gun.” 

The source said that the guns were no longer permanently placed on the runways. “We install the guns, for a short period, only every few weeks to prevent the birds from getting used to them,” he said. Worse lies ahead because monsoon is closing in. Waterlogged runaways create food-gathering opportunities for the birds; and firecrackers tend to be difficult to set off in damp conditions.