TIRANA, Feb. 2 – The Albanian government has announced a tender to sell its stock of Soviet-era MiG fighter aircraft inherited from the Cold War under communism. The decision comes more than a decade after retiring them and seven years after the country’s NATO membership.
In an announcement on the Public Procurement Agency, the defense ministry invites bids for 40 Soviet era planes and helicopters at a price tag of 1.1 million lek to 1.9 million lek (€7,840 to €13,542) each, specifying that the sale is made for non-military use.
The list of aircraft includes MiG-15, MiG-17, MiG-19 and MiG 21 as well as Jak-18 planes and four Mi-4 helicopters.
The forty military aircraft currently preserved in the military bases of Kuà§ova, Rinas, Gjader and Farke are also offered altogether at a starting price of 61.4 million lek (€438,000) in the tender scheduled for February 22, 2016.
The Soviet-era fighters which took the lives of 35 Albanian pilots but were not used in any attack against potential ‘revisionist’ invaders of isolated communist Albania will be offered to museum collectors and for scrap, the defence ministry has earlier said.
The last MiG fighter took off from the Kuà§ova military air base in November 2004 just before Albania declared their retirement and its shift to pure helicopter force.
Under the 45-year communist regime Albania had a considerable air fleet of Soviet Union and Chinese MiG 15, 17, 19 and 21. A number of them are displayed in the country’s state museums, including the new museum of armed forces in Tirana.
“In the 1970s, Albania’s Military Aviation was fully efficient with over 70 MIG-19 and 12 MIG-21 aircraft, a combat squadron of MIG-17 fighter jets and many combat-training MIG-15 aircraft,” say the Albanian Armed Forces.
The first installation of Jet Aviation was established in the Kuà§ova air base, southern Albania, in 1955, comprising MIG-15 aircraft. The Aviation Regiment in Rinas, outside Tirana, composed of a squadron of MIG-19 aircraft and a squadron of MIG-17 aircraft, was created in 1962 when Albania established the Aviation School.
