Instead of for planes, a radar for detecting ships installed at Sarajevo Airport

A radar whose primary purpose is the early detection of ships, not to assist in landing planes, has been installed at Sarajevo International Airport – warns BH aviation expert Rifat Tirak in an interview for the BH news agency Patria (NAP), adding that due to this mistake, which was made intentionally, the residents of Ilidža, Sarajevo and beyond are endangered.

Tirak claims that this radar was procured in 2001 from the French company TALLIS. It is an extremely old, second-hand radar, which was also overpaid multiple times, and which serves for the early detection of ships at sea, not for landing planes at airports.

According to this expert, the radar that should be at Sarajevo Airport was installed on Mount Jahorina. It was purchased in 2006 from the Spanish company INDRA, but was only installed in 2011. That radar on Jahorina performs almost no function.

Tirak previously warned in an interview with Patria that air traffic in BiH is run by the mafia. The sky above Bosnia and Herzegovina, he said, has not been protected by anyone for more than 20 years, because the air traffic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is controlled by domestic and foreign criminal structures. He said he primarily means well-organized criminals from Serbia and Croatia.

Because of this, BiH loses around 100 million KM annually that it fails to collect, and could charge for overflights of aircraft above BiH. It is estimated that between 1,000 and 1,100 aircraft fly over the sky above BiH daily.

Completely illegally and arbitrarily, says Tirak, agreements were made with neighboring countries Serbia and Croatia for them to control the airspace of BiH, which is a gross violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of BiH.

Tirak stated that the story about how BiH began controlling its sky up to 10,000 meters as of November 13, 2014, is actually a major deception of the public.

- The public has been completely hidden from the fact that over more than a third of the territory, military radars of neighboring countries control our airspace at all altitudes – said Tirak.

The Commission for Transport and Communications of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH on Thursday publicly heard the heads of the Agency for Air Navigation Services of BiH (BHANSA), the Directorate of Civil Aviation (BHDCA) and the Council of Ministers of BiH regarding failures in air traffic control in BiH.

According to official audit reports, the air traffic control system in BiH is inefficient, causing BiH to suffer major consequences, primarily economic ones.