The NDA Government is making all efforts to tap the huge growth potential in the aviation sector and the results are there for all to see, Union Minister of Civil Aviation P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju has said.

He was speaking at the inaugural of a three-day international conference on: ‘Bird/Wildlife Strike Prevention’, organised by the World Birdstrike Association (WBA)-South Asia here on Monday. He said that India, with 10 crore air passengers, was the third largest nation in the world in air passenger traffic, and still there was a lot of potential and India could reach the first position.

However, he said, there was no denying the fact that infrastructure should be given a huge boost for India to reach the top spot.

Raju said that there were 70 operational airports in the country and 14 were developed during the past few years. An additional 65 were being developed.

Referring to the peril of bird/wildlife hits to aircraft, the Union Minister said that it was not a new development. “The speed of planes has gone up and noise levels have come down, thereby confusing the birds,” he said. The role of municipalities has gone up to prevent dumping of garbage around airports. The density of population around airports has also gone up and the downtime of aircraft was also going up. All these factors need to be considered in finding remedies to the problem.

He underscored the need for airports authorities to recognise the areas of concern and address them by involving all the stakeholders. He also dwelt on other aspects of safety like terrorist threats to aircraft and in a lighter vein he recalled the incidents of airline passengers being beaten up by airline staff and the other way round.

Principal Secretary, Energy, Ajay Jain said that India was poised to become the number one in the world in air passenger traffic by 2030. He spoke on the measures being taken by the State government to improve air connectivity from AP and to increase the air passenger traffic like reduction of VAT on aviation turbine fuel to 1 per cent.

Lalita Vaswani, vice-president, WBA South Asia and WBA-India member Raman Emani also participated in the inaugural.