Air Somalia suspended for “unsafe practices”

The recently established cross-clan national airline, Air Somalia, has been suspended from flying to the self-declared independent state of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, pending an investigation into unsafe flight practices. Somaliland Minister of Civil Aviation and Air Transport for Somaliland Abdillahi Duale said that the present ban had nothing to do with the fact the airline was called Air Somalia and displayed a Somali star, as had been widely reported in local Somali media and on the internet. Duale said that on 17 April the aircraft arrived in Hargeysa, capital of Somaliland, from Galkayo, in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia. It then filed a flight plan for Bosaso in Puntland. After being advised by Bosaso not to land, it took off from Hargeysa. Attempts thereafter by flight control staff in Hargeysa, Bosaso and Mogadishu to contact the aircraft proved futile. It was later confirmed to be flying to Djibouti, but had changed its signal code mid-flight from TVR2302 to MCC9043, Somaliland authorities said. The incident was detailed in a letter to the UN-supported International Civil Aviation Authority in Nairobi, which has controlled the airspace in Somalia in the absence of a central authority since 1996. According to the letter, the Somaliland minister of civil aviation was “aware of the incident and has assured of appropriate action to prevent repetition of such unsafe air operation practices”.