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Defense minister Martin Stropnický has said that a team of Czech instructors, ground crew and technicians could be sent to Iraq to help train local staff to use the L-159 jets which the Czech government has agreed to sell to Baghdad. Stropnický’s comemnts came during a NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels. The minister said he would like to put the proposal to the government. The contingent would represent further help in the fight against Islamic State. Czech Republic has agreed to sell 15 surplus to requirement subsonic L-159 aircraft to Iraq. The deal has been stalled by British concerns that some radar technology for the planes which it is supplying might fall into the wrong hands.

The plan for the Czech Republic to host a multinational aviation training centre for allied forces could be implemented after 2018, the head of the Czech Airforce Libor Štefánik told deputies in the lower house during a seminar on the development of the Czech airforce. The plan for the Czech Republic to create and lead a multinational aviation centre for allied pilots within the Smart Defence initiative to share capabilities was approved at a NATO summit in Chicago in 2012. The Czech Republic has been a lead country of the HIP Helicopter Task Force Initiative since 2009 and significantly contributes to the training of Afghan helicopter personnel and American aviation instructors. The United States, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Sweden have have already declared interest in participating in the project. The centre should enable training for supersonic jets in due time.

In Business News this week: Czech Turbolet passenger planes could be manufactured in Russia in 2020; the average cost of a Prague taxi is 20 crowns per kilometre gas and diesel prices continue to fall; beekeepers see more than 60 million crowns in subsidies; vegetable prices higher than usual.

A replica of the Germany's World War II Messerschmitt Me-262 plane was one of the biggest attractions on the first day of this year´s two-day international CIAF air show near Hradec Králové, orgnanisers confirmed. The plane has modern avionics and it was made in the United States ten years ago. Its owner is The Messerschmitt Foundation in Munich. Visitors at the event could also see a Belgian plane F-16 in original camouflage and a MIG-15 UTI, a BN-2 Islander, JAS-39 Gripens and L-159 planes. The Prague Military Institute, meanwhile, displayed drones that are mainly used by firefighters and police as well as farmers, foresters and Czech soldiers in the Afghan Province of Bagram.

A full-size replica of a Spitfire, the legendary fighter plane and symbol of the Battle of Britain in WWII was unveiled at Hradčanské náměstí by Prague Castle on Friday to mark the 70th anniversary of the return of Czechoslovak airmen. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Prague Cardinal Dominik Duka, veterans and others. Pilots who served in the RAF returned to Prague not immediately in May of 1945 but in August. When the communists came to power in 1948 the airmen were portrayed as enemies of the state, jailed and persecuted. Some 2,500 had served in the RAF.

In Business News this week: central bank see faster growth but lowers inflation expectations; Hamleys to open flagship store in Prague; German owners seen selling up chain of regional dailies; Caterpillar mining unit to closes; and Czech unmanned aircraft company targets 2016 production.

GE Aviation’s Czech’s unit specializes in the type of turbo-prop engines used by business aircraft and those making fairly short city to city hops. Business was good last year with 80 aero engines sold, an increase of around 30 percent on 2013. That took 2014 turnover to 1.2 billion crowns compared with 860 million crowns in 2013.

A veteran aircraft touched down this morning on Czech soil for the first time in more than 75 years. The Lockheed Electra plane originally bought by the boss of the famous Czechoslovak boot and shoe empire Baťa has just flown in stages from North America and will now be housed in an aircraft museum on the outskirts of Prague.

NATO has requested the Czech Republic to renew its surveillance mission of Icelandic airspace, the defence ministry’s spokesman Petr Medek told the Czech News Agency on Thursday. He said the army is set to reveal the details at a press conference on Friday. The Czech air force took its turn protecting Icleand’s airspace last autumn over the course of nine weeks. Iceland is the only NATO member state with no air force of its own. The head of an airbase in Čáslav, Petr Hromek, told the daily Lidové Noviny on Thursday that the mission should take place in July and August this year.

A Gripen fighter jet crashed at an air base at Čáslav in Central Bohemia on Tuesday afternoon. The plane’s two pilots managed to eject and were unhurt when the aircraft came to a stop in a field near a runway at the base, a spokesperson for the General Staff of the Czech Army said. The cause of the crash is being investigated. An international Gripen training exercise named Lion Effort has been taking place at Čáslav.