Disputed Mogadishu FIR Appears to Return to Normal

For those operating near Africa, some funky happenings had started to catch the public's attention, with word of a "pirate ATC operator" raising eyebrows.

In reality, it was less a "pirate radio station" than it was a territorial dispute, caused by two rivals claiming the same slice of airspace. Today, things should be largely done, now that the Somaliland Civil Aviation and Airports Authority has published a small map of its purview. At the beginning of 2024, Somaliland lay claim to a large swath of the Mogadishu FIR, extending out into the sea. Earlier this month, they published an apparently revised map illustrating a much more modest area of control, centered largely over their capital city of Hargeisa. It should let things calm down a bit, from now on, with much more streamlined operations in line with the rest of the world's air traffic operations.

The issue took place down in the Mogadishu FIR, where crews passing through the area had been given odd, discordant instructions at odds with proper controller behavior. The orders were coming from a station in Somaliland, an independent-ish state that remained unrecognized by the world at large. Somalia, the internationally recognized state overseeing the Mogadishu-governed airspace, was the proper overseer there, but the young upstart insisted it was within its rights to run the show. The result was a chaotic affair where aircraft passing through the region could sometimes receive conflicting - and dangerous - orders. Those who passed within radio range of Hargeisa, Somaliland's capital, had to tread carefully when acting on instructions from center.

There had been a handful of warnings from pilots who received bogus instructions from ATC, to the point where it quickly became common practice to reach out to ATC by alternate non-radio channels to make sure the instructions really were coming from the proper ICAO-approved authority. The Somali Civil Aviation Authority wasn't too happy about the state of affairs, unsurprisingly. The team had only recently been granted ATC autonomy once again after years of instability, so this kind of trouble didn't help their international 'brand' at all. That handover took place in January 2023, when the Mogadishu FIR was restored to Somali control after a 30-year absence.

For those operating in and out of Somalian airports themselves, things were even more confusing. Somaliland remained insistent that it governed its own landing clearances and airspace, but further out, Somalia had sometimes done what it could to do a soft blockade of sorts, refusing to grant external aircraft clearance in order to head into the smaller country. It was a real pain for pretty much everyone involved, and given the track record of disputes in the region, some expected it would be the status quo for good. Surprisingly enough, everything seems ironed out, though a full translation of Somaliland's view of things remains available only in their native language.

FMI: www.caaa.govsomaliland.org