Out of a total of three pilots that the Directorate for Protection and Rescue (DPR) had at its disposal for managing firefighting aircraft, only one remained this year. The reason for that is that two pilots met the conditions for retirement in January, so only one pilot remained at work. This summer, dealing with forest fires will be a serious challenge, said the DPR director Bekim Maksuti.
He added that in recent years the Directorate has been facing a critical shortage of qualified pilots.
“We are making efforts to see how we can keep them, at least this year, all with the aim of receiving new pilots in the meantime, i.e. announcing new announcements for pilots, for which we already have consent and we are waiting for some procedures to be completed in order to we can publish the announcement,” said Maksuti.
If the directorate doesn’t hire pilots soon, the licenses could be revoked, forcing the planes to be grounded.
