Jijiga Gerad Wilwal Airport
Gerad Wilwal Airport is a public airport serving Jijiga, the capital city of the Somali Region in eastern Ethiopia. The airport is located at, which is east of the city. It is named after seventeenth-century jigjiga ruler Wiil Waal.
Jijiga's original airfield is located northwest of the city center at.
History
The first airfield at Jijiga was constructed in 1929. An airplane crash at Jijiga in July 1930 involved the eighth or ninth aircraft introduced to Ethiopia; it was the second airplane disaster in the country. The plane was a Fiat AS-1 with 85 hp engine, a training airplane bought in 1929. The first tests in air pilot training in Ethiopia were passed at the Garad Wilwal Airport by Mishka Babitcheff and Asfaw Ali on 1 and 4 September 1930.By the 1990s, the Garad Wilwal Airport was one of 10 bases of the Ethiopian Air Force.