The official travels by all the employees in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Presidency have cost the Bosnian citizens around BAM 1 million in the past three years. When everything is taken into consideration, experts say that a state-owned aeroplane would not represent luxury, but a form of long-term savings.
Omer Kulic, a pilot with a PhD and 30 years of experience in the field of aviation said it is disastrous that the country does not have a business aeroplane today, but that it had one during the war years (1992-1995), which was used by the then Presidency.
“We can dislike (the Republika Srpska entity President) Milorad Dodik all we want, but he needs an aeroplane with which he can leave RS whenever he wants. But so does Sarajevo. We used to have a business class aeroplane and it was used by the Bosnian Presidency,” Kulic said. “I remember that (the former Presidency members) Alija Izetbegovic and Zivko Radisic flew by it quite often.”
He told N1 that he made some calculation some time ago and that he found that four business-class tickets would cover the cost of an eight-seat aeroplane flight.
If the Presidency bought an aeroplane, Kulic stated that the Presidency would make a regulation on the use of the said aeroplane which would also be available to international organisations, foreign embassies, and entrepreneurs from the country. When the aeroplane would not be used by the Presidency or some other state institutions, the plane could be rented on the international market.
When it comes to servicing costs of such an aeroplane, Kulic said that the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) entity’s Government adopted a regulation recently, by which all passengers taking off from FBiH’s airfields have to pay a EUR 10 fee for the development of civil aviation in FBiH. These funds could then be used for the maintenance of the Presidency’s aeroplane.
Other aircraft registered in Bosnia are the Republika Srpska’s Cesna525 aeroplane often used by Dodik and RS Government officials, aeroplanes given to Sky Srpska company which have never been used because of their age, and a helicopter owned by FBiH’s Interior Ministry.
