The Ethiopian-owned National Airways (Ex-Air Ethiopia) is to start direct air shuttles between Mogadishu of Somalia, and Addis Ababa next week, sources say.
For the past 41 years, Addis Ababa had no direct flights plying the often lucrative air travel to Somalia’s Mogadishu. Somalia, under the military, brutal dictator, Siyad Barre, stopped the air connection between the two countries as he had stopped almost everything else of beneficial benefit to the two nations, including good neighborliness. The two Horn of Africa countries locked horns in a devastating war whose scars are still healing in a number of quarters.
Reports indicate that National Airways will make the flight to Mogadishu and back three times a week.
National Airways started a similar operation, recently, between Garowe and Bossasso of Puntland Federal State of Somalia, to Addis Ababa.
Since 2007, when the airline was founded, National Airways acquired about 11 jets which 
have succeeded to garner a fair share of the Somali commercial travel. The airline makes direct flights to Dubai of the Emirates and Salalah of Oman, too.
The Ethiopian lands in Hargeisa, the Republic of Somaliland. National Airways, according to a VOA Interview with Hussein Hosh, will be joining Ethiopian at Egal International Airport, exploiting the inter-Somali flights market.
The National Airways’ decision to brave the Mogadishu skies after such a long time, comes at a time when a great number of Somalians are negatively stereotyping Ethiopia and Ethiopians, again. Following the ethnic strife among Somalis and Oromo in the Somali region of Eastern Ethiopia, below-the-surface animosities seem to have re-emerged of late despite the seemingly positive reforms inspired by the new Ethiopian PM, Abiy Ahmed, taking momentum in the region.
