The airport was constructed by the Italian colonial authorities in 1922, the first such facility to be opened in
Italian Eritrea with the name "Aeroporto di Gura". It served as the main military airport in the territory. In the mid-1930s, the airport (enlarged and now called
Aeroporto Civile di Asmara-Umberto Maddalena) began offering civilian and commercial flights. On 7 July 1935, an agreement was signed with British "Imperial Airways" to connect Asmara to
Khartoum. A regular
Kassala-Khartoum-Asmara-
Massawa 770 km commercial route was subsequently started with a
Caproni 133 of the Italian
Ala Littoria. Additionally, a regular
Asmara-
Assab-
Mogadishu commercial route was started in summer 1935, with an Ala Littoria's Caproni Ca.133 providing 13-hour flights from the Mogadishu airport to
Italian Eritrea. The aircraft had a maximal capacity of 18 passengers, which at the time was a record. In 1936, Ala Littoria launched an intercontinental connection -called
"Linea dell'Impero"- between Mogadishu-Asmara-
Khartoum-
Tripoli and
Rome. The voyage lasted four days and was one of the first long range flights in the world. During
World War II, the airport was nearly destroyed by the British. It was later renovated in the 1950s, and reopened to offer flights to
Addis Ababa and other cities in
Ethiopia. With Eritrea's independence in the 1990s, the airport became an international portal to the new nation. During the
Eritrean-Ethiopian War, the airport was bombed two times by Ethiopia in 1998 and 2000. In April 2003, after improvements to the airport's runways,
Eritrean Airlines started regular services between Asmara and
Frankfurt,
Milan,
Nairobi and
Rome. In 2004, it served 136,526 passengers (+11.8% vs. 2003). In October 2013,
Lufthansa, which was considered the premier foreign airline in Asmara, suspended service to Frankfurt via Jeddah. A representative said Germany and Eritrea had to reach a new
air transport agreement. ==Facilities==