Shortly after the carrier was formed, four Douglas DC-3s were donated by the United States. The airline began operations in , initially serving domestic destinations with a fleet of three DC-3s and two Cessna 180s. Prior to this, local services had been operated by Aden Airways. The Mogadishu–Aden run kept being flown under a pool agreement with Aden Airways until March 1965, when Somali Airlines embarked on serving the route to this destination with its own aircraft. A service to Nairobi was later launched in . It was discontinued in the same year, after the carrier was banned from flying into Kenyan airspace following Radio Mogadishu airing verbal attacks against the Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta. A weekly service to Dar-es-Salaam was introduced in .