The Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (AFBiH) recently received four new helicopters from the United States (U.S.). This is a great incentive for the AFBiH fleet, but there is still the same problem as to who will operate these and similar aircraft. If the authorities do not take action, the statistics relentlessly show that in the upcoming years, BiH aviation could be in serious trouble, and this staff would have to be borrowed from abroad.
Colonel-General Senad Masovic, Chief of the Joint Staff of the AFBiH stated: “The largest investment project in the process of modernization of the AFBiH, of course, this is only the first project, we expect the next projects that will raise the capacity of the overall function and capabilities of the AFBiH as the only legitimate military force.”
We got the aircraft, but the old problems remained. Lack of staff, mostly pilots. The profession has been warning about this problem for years. Aviation in BiH has collapsed and AFBiH cannot avoid that either. The last organized pilot training was in 1989. The schooling process is expensive and complicated and takes an average of 5 years. And all because the aeroclubs as a base have collapsed, and state institutions have no interest in helping, the interlocutor pointed out.
Omer Kulic, aviation engineer and flight instructor said: “There might be two, three private pilot schools that train young pilots, but that’s exclusively for those, I will say daddy’s boys. There is also a problem in Republika Srpska (RS), they already have several helicopters, but they don’t have pilots, they haven’t been trained in the whole of BiH, so aeroclubs as a basic base have died out, it’s an expensive activity and there is no natural selection during training.”
Necessarily, our staff is educated abroad, and some of them stay there. The situation in the AFBiH is such that they have 42 helicopters of different types, but their take-off depends on the correctness, and many are outdated. The Ministry of Defense assures that the number of pilots in the AFBiH is sufficient for flying activities, but they do not state how many there are. They confirm that the average age of pilots is more than 40 years.
Due to the natural outflow of staff, such as retirement, it is necessary to constantly rejuvenate the flight crew. So far, pilot training has been conducted with the help of partner countries Turkey, Serbia, Greece, and Croatia. The possibility of training flight personnel in the military colleges of partner countries depends on the agreement or the possibility for that country to offer openings for pilot training.
Peter Vojinovic, editor of the aviation portal Tango Six stated: “I think that in the worst case, they will have to hire pilots from abroad, so all those procurements that are expensive, but very useful, will not be endangered due to the current objective problem of the lack of pilots.”
It is commendable that the AFBiH is considering training lieutenants for military pilots, and some of them would be trained as helicopter pilots. For now, everything is in preparation. Until then, the appeals of the profession have become louder. The profession must be competent, not politics, otherwise, we will completely lose the collapsed BiH aviation.
E.Dz.
Source: BHRT
