On December 18, 2023, Dr Santanu Sen raised a question in the Rajya Sabha about instances of wildlife hits (read: bird hits) in Indian airports. As part of his answer, the then minister of state for civil aviation, General V.K. Singh (retd), provided data, which is being discussed now in light of the AI 171 crash in Ahmedabad on June 12.
The data range was from 2018 to October 2023. Gen. Singh informed the house that no plane had crashed due to bird hits during this period, but “one occurrence (was) reported wherein the aircraft made emergency landing due to bird strike at Kolkata Airport (West Bengal) in 2021”.
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In the table added as Annexure 1, New Delhi tops the list of bird hits with 710 reported incidents in the period mentioned. Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport was a far second with 319 incidents. At number three was Bangalore’s Kempegowda International Airport with 217 hits, and five and six were separated by just one incident—Cochin International Airport, Kochi, with 187 and Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport with 186 hits.
THE WEEK would like to clarify that there is no indication at present to suggest that the ill-fated AI 171 encountered a bird hit at Ahmedabad.
In his answer to the Rajya Sabha, Gen. Singh outlined various measures taken by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to minimise bird hits. “Rule 91 of The Aircraft Rule, 1937, prohibits dumping of garbage and slaughter of animals that may attract wildlife within 10km of Aerodrome Reference Point,” he said.
The worrisome indicator for Ahmedabad in the data was a 107 per cent jump in incidents between 2022 and 2023 (39 to 81 hits). The only other airport in the top five (by incidents) that saw a jump was Kochi, with 57.14 per cent more incidents between 2022 and 2023 (28 to 44 hits). The other three airports saw wildlife incidents falling—Delhi by 8.15 per cent, Bengaluru by 11.63 per cent and Hyderabad by 5.13 per cent.
