The crew made an emergency landing and two people were injured.
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If Shabaab was responsible for the suspected bomb attack, it would mark the first instance of the group detonating a bomb onboard a passenger plane.
Daalo Airlines have said in a statement that the incident is being investigated by the Somali Civil Aviation Authority and technicians from Greece.
Analysts said the bomber may have smuggled the bomb on board in his wheelchair before moving to a different seat once on board, a Western diplomat briefed on the investigation told the Wall Street Journal.
Some reports suggest that an explosive device may have been hidden inside a laptop of one of the passengers.
Somali officials identified the lone fatality as suspect Abdullahi Abdisalam Borleh.
A Somalia government spokesman said that CCTV footage at the Mogadishu airport shows two men handing what looks like a laptop computer to the suspected suicide bomber after he passed through the security checkpoint.
“The initial investigation results indicate that the bomb was planted in a laptop and was carried by one of the passengers”.
The pilot of the Daallo Airlines flight, Captain Vlatko Vodopivec, managed to stay in control of the aircraft and make an emergency landing back in Mogadishu airport.
Thus far, six people have been arrested in connection with the blast after examinations of CCTV images in the airport, a senior Somali intelligence official told the Associated Press.
All other 74 passengers on the plane were safe after the pilot returned the plane safely to Mogadishu airport.
Because the plane was at a lower altitude, he was able to land safely, he said.
“It would have been much worse if we were higher”, Vodopivec said.
If the explosion happened at a higher altitude, the hole in the fuselage might have caused more severe structural damage, he said.
After the explosion, passengers put on oxygen masks and air could be heard rushing thought the hole in the fuselage, according to a video taken by a passenger.
Mogadishu airport is heavily fortified and adjoins the capital’s main base of the African Union mission to Somalia, the 22,000-strong force backing the government in the battle against Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab insurgents.
Somalia’s former director of national intelligence, Ahmed Moallim Fiqi, told VOA earlier that the nature of the attack and evidence pointed to “a planned bomb attack” against the airliner.
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The pilot blamed the incident on the lack of security around the plane at Mogadishu Airport, describing the facility as chaotic.
