Šarovce Airstrip

The closure was due to economic and functional obsolescence. The airstrip was primarily used for agricultural aviation (crop dusting) by the state-owned company Agrolet during the socialist era. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the agricultural sector was restructured, and the centralized, state-run aerial application model declined. Many such single-purpose airfields became economically unviable. The land was ultimately sold and repurposed for a more profitable use: renewable energy generation.

The entire site of the former airstrip has been completely redeveloped and is now the location of a large photovoltaic power plant, known as FVE Šarovce. The former grass runway and any associated structures have been replaced by thousands of ground-mounted solar panels and related electrical infrastructure. The plant has been operational since circa 2012 and feeds electricity into the national grid.

Šarovce Airstrip was a typical agricultural airfield ('poľnohospodárske letisko') common throughout rural Czechoslovakia. Its primary and almost exclusive purpose was to support the large-scale collective farms (JRD - Jednotné roľnícke družstvo) in the region. Operations consisted of aircraft like the Zlín Z-37 Čmelák or Antonov An-2 taking off and landing for crop dusting, fertilization, and pest control. It was a functional piece of agricultural infrastructure, vital for the local agrarian economy of its time, but it had no scheduled passenger service, major cargo operations, or military significance. The ICAO code SK-0090 was a national identifier for a small airfield, not an official international ICAO code.

There are zero plans or prospects for reopening the Šarovce Airstrip. The conversion of the land into a significant and operational solar power plant is a permanent change of use. Reverting the site to an airfield would require the complete demolition of the multi-million euro power generation facility, making it financially and logistically infeasible.