NEW DELHI / AGARTALA, Nov 25 (TIWN):Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered surveillance of 20 airports in the country after they were found prone to 'wildlife intrusion and bird-hits'. According to DGCA, wildlife strike data was collected for the year 2013 to identify the critical airports and analysis of the information revealed that the said 20 airports had high incidence of such strikes.

Among the other airports put under watch are Nagpur, Hubli, Tirupathi, Varanasi, Bhubhaneshwar, Agartala and Srinagar.

According to DGCA data, incidents of aircraft suffering bird hits had nearly doubled to 719 in 2014 from 378 in 2010 across all airports in the country.

In 2014-15, around 50.5 lakh passengers travelled in and out of Ahmedabad airport followed by 7.12 lakh in Vadodara and 3.51 lakh in Rajkot. Also, Ahmedabad airport recorded 39000 aircraft movement in 2014-15, while Vadodara and Rajkot recorded 5634 and 3334 movements.