English Wikipedia gives the airport’s origin as 1928, when the Italian colonial administration opened Aeroporto di Mogadiscio-Petrella, and describes it as the main military airport of Italian Somaliland. Both statements are marked as needing a citation, so they are given here as Wikipedia’s. Commercial flying followed in the 1930s: a route from Asmara through Assab to Mogadishu began in 1935 with an Ala Littoria Caproni 133, a 13-hour trip, and in 1936 Ala Littoria linked Mogadishu with Rome via Asmara, Khartoum and Tripoli, a journey of four days.

After independence in 1960 the airport was enlarged for foreign airlines and for the state carrier, Somali Airlines, and by 1969 it could take small jets and DC-6B airliners. The 1970s brought the decisive change. The government of Mohamed Siad Barre, then allied to Moscow, enlisted Soviet help for major renovations of the airport’s facilities. In the 1980s, after Somalia had turned to the West, the US Navy was recruited to enlarge the airport further, with a modern control tower and navigation aids, and the civil aviation authority signed a contract worth about 17 billion lire ($8.5 million) with the Italian company Selenia for a second terminal and another tower. The civil war ended all of it.

Wikipedia records that the Somali Air Corps used the airport in the 1970s and 1980s, with an airlift wing stationed in the capital and a military academy on the airfield that every member of the air force passed through. No unit numbers, strengths or aircraft lists for these units have been found in published sources, and none are given here. The service’s jet base was Baledogle, some 90 kilometres to the north-west; Mogadishu was its transport, training and administrative centre.

The clearest evidence of the air force at Mogadishu is what it left behind. On 3 March 1993 the Australian War Memorial’s photographer George Gittoes recorded a MiG-15UTI trainer and two MiG-21s, coded 205 and 248, wrecked at “the airbase formerly used by the Somalian Aeronautical Corps and now by the Unified Task Force in Somalia”. English Wikipedia counts eight MiG-21s (six MiG-21MFs and two MiG-21UMs), three MiG-15UTIs, one SF.260W and an unknown number of MiG-17 wrecks at the airport in 1993. Early in 1993 the US Marine attack helicopter squadron HMLA-369 moved here from Baledogle, according to Wikipedia’s Baledogle article.

Lufthansa Flight 181, a Boeing 737 named Landshut, was hijacked on 13 October 1977 by four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine acting with the Red Army Faction. After stops across the Middle East, during which the captain, Jürgen Schumann, was shot dead at Aden, the aircraft made an unannounced landing on the main runway at Mogadishu at about 04:34 CET on 17 October, according to Wikipedia.

The Somali government allowed the West German counter-terrorist unit GSG 9 to act. Wikipedia records that moments before the assault Somali soldiers set off a large explosion about 300 metres in front of the airliner as a distraction, and that “the Somali Air Force had flown outdated MiGs over the airport all day, taking off and landing as a diversion”; that detail has not been confirmed from a second source. At 00:05 CET on 18 October the GSG 9 commander, Ulrich Wegener, gave the order to storm the aircraft. Three hijackers were killed and the fourth was badly wounded; all 87 passengers and 4 crew were brought out. Wikipedia’s airport article gives 86 passengers.

After 1991 the airport was damaged and often closed. African Express Airways resumed regular international flights on 3 August 2006; on 8 June 2007 the Transitional Federal Government renamed the airport after Aden Abdullah Osman Daar, who had died that day; and in 2008, as fighting resumed after the Ethiopian intervention, most civil aircraft used the K50 strip about 50 kilometres away instead. Once the government held the capital in 2011, the Dubai firm SKA ran operations, followed in September 2013 by the Turkish company Favori. Presidents Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan opened a Turkish-built terminal in January 2015 (Wikipedia).

The air force followed the airport back to life. On 1 July 2015 Defence Minister Abdikadir Ali Dini reopened its headquarters in the Afisiyone area of Mogadishu, closed for 25 years (Goobjoog News). Bell 412 helicopters arrived from July 2023 and Italy handed over four Bell 412EPX in August 2024 (Military Africa), and in June 2025 the three T129 ATAKs delivered by Turkey made their first test flights at the TURKSOM base in the capital (AllAfrica). Middle East Eye reported in April 2025 that Turkish companies run the airport and seaport, that Turkish TB2 drones were already flying and two Akinci had arrived, and that Turkish air operations are coordinated with US Africa Command; it did not say which aircraft fly from which site, and neither does this page.