Rasovo Cropduster Strip

Primarily economic reasons. The strip was part of a network supporting the large, collectivized farms of the socialist era. After the fall of communism, the transition to a market economy led to the privatization and fragmentation of farmland and the dissolution of the state-owned agricultural aviation operator ('Balkan - Selskostopanska Aviatsia'). This made the dense network of local cropduster strips, including Rasovo, obsolete and financially unsustainable.

The site is completely decommissioned and has been fully reclaimed for agricultural use. An examination of the coordinates (43.68, 23.25786) via satellite imagery shows no remnants of a runway, hangars, or any other airport infrastructure. The land is now a cultivated field, indistinguishable from the surrounding farmland. The former airstrip exists only as a historical record and a faint outline on some older maps or aerial photos.

The Rasovo Cropduster Strip was a functional, local airfield with no major historical events associated with it. Its significance lies in its role as a key piece of infrastructure for the industrialized agricultural model of socialist Bulgaria. It primarily handled operations for agricultural aircraft, most notably the Antonov An-2. These planes were used for large-scale crop dusting, aerial seeding, and the application of fertilizers and pesticides on the collective farms in the Montana Province. It was one of hundreds of similar airfields that formed the backbone of the country's highly active agricultural aviation sector from the 1960s to the late 1980s.

There are no known plans or realistic prospects for reopening the Rasovo Cropduster Strip. The economic and agricultural landscape of Bulgaria has fundamentally changed. Modern farming practices rely on more efficient ground-based machinery and, increasingly, on unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for precision spraying, which do not require dedicated airstrips. The revival of such a small, specialized airfield is not considered economically viable or necessary.