Air crash: Defence Ministry report shows bleak picture of state of Bulgarian Air Force
A bleak picture of the state of the Bulgarian Air Force has emerged from a Defence Ministry report commissioned after the September 2024 trainer aircraft fatal crash.
The report, presented on November 12, describes a chronic shortage of serviceable aircraft, pilots having too few flying hours, and regulatory documents that are outmoded.
Caretaker Defence Minister Atanas Zapryanov said that the report was not blame-seeking.
“I am bound to present the facts as they are,” said Zapryanov, adding that he had promised “full transparency”.
“In three years there have been three accidents at three different air bases – it is extremely worrying,” he said.
“First and foremost is the chronic shortage of serviceable aircraft over the years for all aviation platforms. MiG-29 fighters, Su-25 attack fighters, L-39 training fighters, even for our Spartan transport aircraft. Also Cougar and Mi-17 helicopters.
“The available number of aircraft and helicopters for operational use are not sufficient to support the flight of pilots to perform all tasks and exercises. After the start of the war in Ukraine, the MiG-29, Su-25 and Mi-17 were left without support,” Zapryanov said.
He said that there was a “strategically wrong policy over the years to bet on Soviet platforms and the delayed rearmament of the Air Force led us to the current crisis with the state of aviation equipment.”
Flight hours depend on the operational readiness of the aircraft.
“Next year we will have five more operational Cougar aircraft. We have decided to overhaul three more. That is, if we manage to bring 10 Cougar helicopters to flight readiness, the flight of the pilots at the 24th Aviation base can be according to Nato standards. Because we’ll have a resource for that.”
“The second trend is that our pilots don’t have enough flight time for these reasons. In other words, they don’t fly enough.”
The third problem reflected in the report is that some of the regulatory documents concerning the planning and reporting of flight activity are outdated and do not regulate the responsibilities of the individuals involved in the management of the flights.
Zapryanov said that public interest was high not only in connection with the September 13 crash, but also because there have been other such incidents in recent years.
“I appeal to the 51st National Assembly to implement its decision to increase the salaries of military personnel if we want to have an army, ground forces, and air force at all,” he said.
“If we stagnate salaries at this level, the situation will not be changed,” Zapryanov said.
“A serious problem is the leakage of personnel to other structures because of differences in salaries. Some of our helicopter pilots go to the Interior Ministry or the Ministry of Transport because of the higher salaries there,” he said.
Defence Chief Admiral Emil Eftimov told the briefing: “Decades of underfunding in the Ministry of Defence system lead to risks of accidents, to aircraft crashes.
“The Air Force Command is to provide a military aviation concept that minimizes the risk to young pilots in the future. It is necessary to solve this issue and find the funding for this,” Eftimov said.
Please support The Sofia Globe’s independent journalism by becoming a subscriber to our page on Patreon:
