Motion to preserve the Kägiswil airfield
The Federal Council is being instructed to back up the Federal Council's aviation policy report from 2016 and to take measures to ensure that the Kägiswil airfield, which is important for training and further education, is retained for fixed-wing aviation in the future. This is what National Councillor and AeCS Central President Matthias Jauslin is calling for in a broadly supported motion.
The SIL object sheet stipulates that the Kägiswil airfield should primarily be used for flight training, tourist and business flights as well as motorized, gliding and parachuting sports. However, current efforts by the federal government show that the Kägiswil airfield is to be converted into a REGA maintenance base and the existing flight operations would be forced to give up - although coexistence would be perfectly possible.
This behind-the-scenes shadow procedure with REGA circumvents the rights of the current airport operator and lacks transparency. It is also known that Flughafen Zürich AG is offering REGA an alternative location within the airport perimeter for its maintenance base, which means that it is not absolutely necessary to move away from Zurich.
The intended change of purpose of Kägiswil airfield not only contradicts the object sheet, but also the federal aviation policy report from 2016, which requires the Federal Council to create favorable framework conditions for the development of airport infrastructures, provided that they serve traffic that is in the public interest. Flights for training and further education are expressly considered to be in the public interest. In addition, according to the Federal Council, the existing network of airfields should remain intact.
As all civil airfields in the immediate and wider vicinity of Kägiswil airfield are already operating at full capacity, they cannot simply absorb the aircraft stationed in Kägiswil or their flight movements, the motion emphasizes.