Somalia has taken a significant step towards strengthening its aviation industry after restoring access to an international airline ticketing and payment settlement system, a development expected to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign systems and improve the monitoring of revenue generated from air travel.
The Federal Government announced the development on October 14, with Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Farah Nur informing the Council of Ministers that the country had made progress in restoring the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) ticketing arrangements.
The development addresses a longstanding challenge for Somali travel agencies, which have relied on billing and settlement arrangements operated in other countries to conduct some international airline ticketing transactions. Reports on the initiative have identified countries including Turkey and the United Kingdom among those whose systems Somali agencies previously used.
Why Somalia relied on other countries for airline ticketing
Somalia’s challenge was not that airlines could not sell tickets to passengers travelling to and from the country. Rather, the country lacked its own country-specific arrangement within IATA’s Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP), which facilitates financial transactions between accredited travel agents and airlines.
Without a locally established arrangement, Somali travel agencies had to use billing codes associated with other countries to process certain ticket sales and settle payments with airlines.
The Somali Civil Aviation Authority has previously explained that the absence of a Somali IATA country code for these transactions meant that agencies relied on foreign billing arrangements. The authority has said this could result in commissions associated with ticket sales being channelled to the countries whose systems were used.
This arrangement created a challenge for the country’s aviation industry because Somali agencies were serving customers in a market that lacked its own dedicated IATA settlement framework.
Restoring the system is intended to address that gap by giving eligible Somali travel agencies a more direct route into the international ticketing and payment network.
However, the government has not publicly detailed every historical or technical reason Somalia lacked the arrangement, and the development should not be interpreted as meaning that international flights or airline ticket sales to Somalia had previously been impossible.
How the IATA system works
The system at the centre of the development is the Billing and Settlement Plan, commonly known as BSP.
IATA, founded in 1945, is a global airline industry association whose members include carriers operating international and domestic flights. It develops industry standards and provides services intended to make cooperation between airlines and travel agents more efficient.
The BSP provides a standardised framework through which IATA-accredited travel agents report ticket sales and settle the money owed to participating airlines.
Instead of every travel agency having to manage separate financial arrangements with every airline it works with, the system helps organise reporting, payments and reconciliation through a common framework. It also supports financial oversight and the calculation of commissions.
For example, when an accredited travel agency sells an eligible airline ticket, the transaction can be recorded through the relevant system. The framework then helps manage the reporting and settlement of the payment between the agency and the airline.
Establishing a Somali BSP arrangement therefore gives the country’s eligible travel agencies a locally based channel through which to participate in these processes.
It is important to distinguish this arrangement from an airline booking website. The BSP is primarily a financial and administrative system for ticket sales; it is not itself an airline, an airport or a platform that determines the price passengers pay for flights.
Somalia began testing the system in April
The restoration follows work that began earlier in 2026.
On April 30, the International Air Transport Association announced that it had launched a pilot of the BSP in Somalia, with a full rollout initially planned for the end of May.
The pilot involved four travel agencies and several airlines serving the country, including Ethiopian Airlines. IATA said the arrangement was intended to expand to more than 300 travel agencies operating in Somalia, alongside airlines serving the market.
The Somali authorities subsequently reported progress towards establishing the country’s own ticketing and settlement arrangements.
On October 11, the Somali Civil Aviation Authority was reported to have said the country was preparing for a nationwide rollout following a successful local trial. Its Director General, Ahmed Moallin Hassan, said a test ticket had been issued by a Mogadishu travel agency in July using the new Somali code.