pilot

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A Somali passenger plane made an emergency crash-landing on the shoreline beside Mogadishu’s international airport on Tuesday morning after a technical fault, with all 55 people on board surviving, according to airline Starsky Aviation and the country’s aviation regulator. Starsky Aviation said the pilot’s “swift and calm decision-making” helped save the 50 passengers and five crew after the aircraft, a Fokker 50, reported a problem shortly after takeoff from Aden Adde International Airport and requested…

NAIROBI — Thirty-one years ago this week, a Nigerian diplomat walked into a modest office at Wilson Airport and asked two Kenyan pilots to do something almost no one could know about. The mission: fly the body of Somalia’s ousted ruler, Mohamed Siad Barre, from Lagos to his hometown of Garbaharey for a swift Islamic burial — quietly, safely and without alerting authorities across half a continent. For the first time, one of those pilots, Hussein Mohamed Anshuur — a former Kenya Air Force captain and co-founder of Bluebird…

MOGADISHU — Somalia’s Al-Shabaab insurgents have released a new video showing Oleynik Aleksandr, a Ukrainian national and helicopter pilot held by the group since early 2024, appealing to the Ukrainian government and the United Nations to launch talks for his release and that of fellow crew members. The footage features Aleksandr identifying himself as the captain of a United Nations–contracted helicopter that made an emergency landing in militant-held territory in January 2024 while en route to Wisil, near Ceelbuur, in…

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Al-Shabaab has released a video showing a Ukrainian helicopter pilot contracted by the United Nations pleading for his freedom, in one of the group’s most prominent hostage appeals involving a foreign national in recent years. In the footage distributed by al-Shabaab’s Kataib media arm, the pilot identifies himself as Oleynik Aleksandr and says he was captured after an emergency landing in central Somalia in January 2024, in territory controlled by the militant group. Addressing the camera directly, he…

A pilot from Turkish Airlines met with a tragic fate, collapsing mid-air, an incident that led to an emergency descent in New York, as announced by the national flag carrier on Wednesday.The flight had originated from Seattle, a breezy city on America's West Coast, on Tuesday night, according to airline spokesperson Yahya Üstün's post on social media site X."Our Airbus 350 pilot for flight TK204 from Seattle to Istanbul fell unconscious while we soared in the sky," he shared."Despite valiant attempts at first aid, the duo of…

Al-Shabaab pilot may be planning attacks in Kenya, police warn Kenyan security agencies have appealed to the public to voluntarily release information that could lead to the arrest and prosecution of Rashid Mwalimu, who is wanted by anti-terrorism police. According to a statement sent to media houses, Mwalimu, who is currently in Somalia, should be considered armed and dangerous; he…