SURAT: The Surat airport is a home of as many as 96 species of birds that flourish inside the airfield, a report by the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) has revealed.
Not only birds, which pose a big bird-hit risk, the airport is home to mongooses and venomous snakes too. According to the data presented in the interim report, there have been 88 incidents of bird hits in the last five years at the Surat airport, which also has several prawn farms in the vicinity.
Most of the bird hits were recorded during September, October and November.
The interim report was submitted to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and SACON will present the strategies to manage the wildlife now.
Security at the airport had become a serious issue after the infamous incident of a private airline’s aircraft crashing into the buffalo on the runway in 2014.
Study was conducted after AAI invited SACON to take up a comprehensive study at selected airports to understand the bird community of the selected airports, identify the problematic birds and suggest mitigation measures to reduce the bird and wildlife-related hazards to aircraft. Surat airport was suggested by AAI among the first five airports where such studies were required and get scientific suggestions to mitigate the risks.
The Coimbatore-based institute collected the birds and wildlife data from December 2020 to March 2021.
A total of 154 species were recorded in the 10 km radius of the airport. “Concerning the waste disposal, Surat is an excellent model city and airport authority also works very closely with corporation and police officials in keeping the surrounding excellently clean. However, the airport is surrounded by wetlands, water bodies and seacoast with plenty of food resources for birds and wildlife,” the report states.
“In order to understand and prevent these bird strikes, knowledge about the factors leading to the bird strikes is very important,” the report states.
PV Karunakaran, co-investigator of study, said, “After submitting the interim report to AAI, we collected more data and started analyzing it. The final report with suggestions will take a few weeks.”
In addition to scheduled airlines, the airport also sees many chartered flights of companies located in Hazira, VVIP movements etc.
