Every other aircraft in Croatia back in 2017 was twenty years old or even older. The latest EU statistics which show the age of Croatia's planes are of concern.
As Adriano Milovan/Novac writes on the 8th of December, 2019, according to these EU statistics, out of the total of 30 aircraft that made up the Croatian aviation fleet for commercial passenger traffic in 2017, 15, or half, were 20 or more years old. The Croatian aviation fleet also had no aircraft under five years old, EU statistics show.
Croatia is among the EU member states with the oldest aviation fleet. Other member states with a larger share of planes older than 20 in operation in 2017 were Sweden, with 55 percent, and Lithuania with 52 percent. Among the EU member states, only Croatia and Cyprus had no aircraft under five years of age.
The obsolescence of the Croatian aviation fleet is also indicated by the EU statistics according to which eight aircraft, or more than a quarter of the total number, were 15 to 19 years old. In 2017, Croatia only had one plane between 10 and 14 years old, while six of them, according to Eurostat, were as young or five to nine years old.
In the EU as a whole in 2017, there were a total of 6,711 aircraft engaged in commercial passenger transport. About one fifth of them, or 21 percent, were under five years of age, and more than a quarter or 27 percent were between five and nine years old, while nearly one fifth or 19 percent were between 10 and 14 years old. Just over a third of EU aircraft, or 34 percent, in 2017 were over 15 years of age, of which about half were aged 20 or over.
The most modern aviation fleet in the EU, according to Eurostat data, is owned by Finland, which did not have aircraft aged 20 or more in operation in 2017. The aircraft fleets of Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Austria and the Netherlands also have a very small share of old aircraft.
The largest number of commercial passenger planes in the EU in 2017 was in the United Kingdom, with 1,312, followed by Germany, with 1,100 planes, and France, with 571 planes, while Cyprus has the smallest number of commercial passenger aircraft.
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