In a potential nightmare for civil aviation, it appears air traffic control over the busy Horn of Africa airspace has been politically weaponized. Over the weekend, OpsGroup shared news of at least 10 reports of fake controllers operating on Mogadishu flight information region (FIR) frequencies and issuing instructions contrary to those given by the authentic sector controller. They included bogus climb and descent clearances. The impacted area was confined mostly to the northern part of Mogadishu airspace. According to OpsGroup, the fake instructions emanated from Hargeisa in Somaliland on VHF frequency 132.5 and HF 11300.
Somaliland is an internationally unrecognized state that is considered part of Somalia, but since 1991 it has functioned autonomously and sought independence. It is bordered to the south and west by Ethiopia. In January, Somaliland signed an agreement with Ethiopia that granted Red Sea port rights in exchange for official recognition. Somalia condemned the move and retaliated by selectively blocking aircraft movements in and out of Somaliland with Mogadishu Control, denying entry of this traffic into the Mogadishu FIR. Somaliland countered by asserting airspace control over its claimed territory, announced via an international aviation advisory and accompanying press release issued on February 13.
The Somaliland Civil Aviation and Airports Authority said that “any problems and disruptions [that] occur…will be [the] responsible (sic) by (sic) the Mogadishu government.” The ATC transmissions from Hargeisa are designed to mimic official ones from Mogadishu Control and are not identified as separate or distinct from it, according to OpsGroup, and are designed to sow confusion as opposed to traffic deconfliction.
The impacted airspace is one of the main and most direct routes between the Middle East and Asia into Africa. Several other countries in the area—Yemen and the Tigray region of Eritrea and Ethiopia—are designated no-fly areas.
Somalia previously backed out of an agreement brokered by the United Nations that would have established joint management of the airspace with Somaliland and asserted unilateral authority in 2018, revoking flight permissions and imposing new regulations.