The Skies are Serbian-Blue...

The air ways over the former Yugoslavia are being closed one by one, because the flight control system has fallen apart in our wars. If the new state does not show understanding for the European integration of flight control systems, the skies over the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia will remain the possession of one nation only, and at least US$ 100 million will be earned by someone else.

On May 9, the Federal Government quietly discharged 16 officials. One was left for later - Air Force Colonel Drago Karl, director of the Federal Flight Control Department (SUKL). Last Monday, it was his turn. In this way the several months long drama in the SUKL was ended in our usual, primitive way. Colonel Karl was sacked against the will of the employees, while the public was fed with allusions to his nationality (a Dubrovnik citizen) and the "international conspiracy" against the Serbian skies in which - as it is widely-known - sits God, a Serb himself. Thus the real reasons for the conflict remained obscure. Namely, it was a case of concealing previous malversations and differences concerning the future of the flight control system in the new state.

Immediately after taking on the job, Col. Karl examined the books: it turned out that some US$ 35 million have not been charged for foreign planes' overflights since 1984. The figure was later corrected to US$ 19.5 million, although the Flight Controllers' Independent Union believes that the sum is much larger - 150 to 200 million US dollars. It also turned out that some foreign airlines paid for flight control services in Dinars, which is against the regulations; some did not pay at all; the address of others is unknown and it is questionable whether they exist at all. Flight controllers say that the usual trick is to report a DC-9, while in truth a "jumbo-jet" (for which the overflight is much more expensive) is flying over.

Regardless of these losses, the flight control had charged up to a thousand overflights per day (the price for a DC-9 is US$ 1,000) before the war, while this number is halved now. If the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) and its SUKL are not integrated into the single European system EUROCONTROL, envisaged and adopted at the European Conference on Civil Aviation (ECAC), we will be left without the overflight of any foreign planes, with our Serbian-blue skies unspoiled by European or any other enemies.

EUROCONTROL has been labeled as an attack on the new state's sovereignty, as European anti-Serbian trickery. The background and motive for these attack, however, are of a different nature. Namely, the FRY's constitution does is not mention air space at all, while the 1974 ex-Yugoslavia's constitution entrusted it to the army. In European examples (and previous experience) flight control departments stand as non-governmental and non-profit organizations of public interests, whose revenues are spent for the maintenance and development of the system itself. In Yugoslavia, however, many entities have taken a slice or two from this particular cake, and the controllers say that a considerable part of the hard currency revenues went for other purposes.

This is not the worst, though. The worst is that bureaucratic Mafias are prepared to kill the hen that lays golden eggs. Belgrade's chances of becoming one of the future 13 European regional flight control centers were almost 100%, for it has the best technological and expertise basis. Besides, around 100 flight controllers have withdrawn from the ex-Yugoslav states to Belgrade.

The time for saving the flight control authority and ensuring its integration into European system is running out. Slovenia and Macedonia have agreed, in principle, to cooperate at a professional level, Croatia is prepared to agree. Their only precondition is that the new integrated flight control agency be of the usual European kind: a non-governmental public organization whose relations with the army are regulated on a partnership basis, and not on hierarchy. This is understandable: no-one is willing to have the one who had bombarded him a few months ago in charge of his air space.

A first breakthrough is already visible there: the first agreement on coordination between the regional flight controls in Belgrade and Zagreb was signed last Thursday in Vienna. The continuation of the procedure is expected as soon as "technical and procedural details" between Austria on one hand, and Slovenia and Croatia on the other, are resolved. All these provisional measures, however, cannot consistently resolve the question of European integration until the final consent of the FRY authorities is given.