The Somali government has officially announced that it is set to relaunch the Somali flag carrier, Somali Airlines. The news comes after a period of 34 years in which the airline never saw flights.
The announcement was made at a reception in the East-African nation’s capital, Mogadishu, by Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Mohammad Farrah Nuh, as reported by Aviation Week. He confirmed that the resurfaced carrier would acquire two Airbus A320s, to be purchased from Lema Air Group.
Somali Airlines was originally founded in 1964, with the help of the former Italian flag carrier Alitalia, having closer ties to the European nation after it had gained independence from Italy four years prior. It operated a mixed fleet, starting out with a few Douglas DC-3s and Cessna 180s to both domestic and other regional destinations.
At the peak of its operations in the early 1980s, Somali Airlines operated Boeing 707s and 720Bs, Fokker F27-600s, and other smaller aircraft. The airline flew as far as Frankfurt and Rome, as well as Western African destinations such as Banjul and Conakry. This was all aided by the acquisition of Airbus A310s, aimed at phasing out the Boeing 707.
However, this all abruptly came to an end in 1991. The Somali civil war had just broken out earlier in the year, and the carrier could no longer safely operate. The country also lost control of its own airspace that year as well, as there was no viable government to operate it, meaning that all airspace operations had to be managed out of Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
Flying in Somalia
At the moment, a handful of private airlines operate out of Mogadishi, including Jubba airways, who flies to other East African nations and domestically using a fleet of Fokker 50s. Mogadishu is also served by a couple of International airlines, including Egyptair’s fifth freedom flight to Cairo via Djibouti, Turkish Airlines’ flight to Istanbul on a 737 MAX, and Ugandan Airlines’ four-times weekly flight to Entebbe using a CRJ-900.
Somali Airlines’ comeback has been over a decade in the making. There have been plans to relaunch the airline since 2012, but these have only been made possible with Somalia taking back control of its airspace in 2017, and the airspace being designated as Class A in 2023.
