Skopje, 26 January 2024 (MIA) — The national air navigation service provider M-NAV has officially appointed new management after the Jan. 4 incident in which intruders broke into the facility and attacked staff.

Milan Korakj is the new Management Board chair and executive director of the Aviation Technology sector. Hekuran Asani is the new member of the Management Board and executive director in the Air Navigation sector. Their names have been published on the M-NAV website after all required legal procedures were completed Thursday, M-NAV sources said.

Earlier, the Civil Aviation Agency carried out an emergency audit following the incident and prescribed 11 mandatory measures as part a corrective plan to be drawn up jointly by the CAA auditors and M-NAV. The auditors will then be supervising the activities' implementation, the agency's director Tomislav Tuntev said.

During the audit, the CAA discovered serious violations of security procedures in M-NAV as well as of provisions of the National Air Traffic Control Program and the Aviation Law.

Even though the Jan. 4 intruders did not enter the air traffic control room where air traffic controllers communicated with pilots, Tuntev said that auditors found "a series of other omissions that had probably been tolerated for a long period of time in the facility itself."

Following the incident, the government decided to change the management, replacing Fahrudin Hamidi and Ljube Stamenkovski with Korakj and Asani.

This led to the Trade Union of Air Traffic Controllers to suspend its announced general strike, which it had scheduled because of the unionists' disapproval of the work of the then M-NAV management.

Also, the Primary Public Prosecutor's Office in Skopje launched an investigation against eight persons suspected to have committed the crime of endangering air traffic safety according to Article 303 Paragraph 2 in connection with Article 22 of the Criminal Code.

The State Labor Inspectorate is also auditing M-NAV. Auditors are looking into complaints from candidates who had applied at the company's recent job opportunity announcement. mr/