Bomb threats have caused diversions and emergency landings for at least 15 flights across Europe, renewing questions about a possibly coordinated effort to disrupt travel. The series of warnings on Thursday morning affected flights between Italy, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Finland, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Greece and Czechia. On Tuesday seven planes across Europe were searched or diverted because of malicious hoax bomb alerts.
On Monday a flight from the UK to Bulgaria was diverted after a threat that was apparently without substance. The latest alerts affected flights by Ryanair, Aer Lingus, Wizz Air, Finnair and LOT. Initial searches of some of the planes found nothing suspicious.
Two Ryanair flights from Copenhagen and Madrid to Sofia made emergency landings in the Bulgarian capital while a Ryanair flight from London to Sofia was diverted and landed at Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city. A Bulgarian government spokesperson said: “Upon landing, the necessary inspections were carried out in accordance with the applicable procedures and no issues were identified. Airport operations at both Sofia airport and Plovdiv airport have returned to normal.” An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to the Évreux-Fauville military airbase in northern France.
A Wizz Air flight from Milan to Warsaw was diverted to Vienna, while a Ryanair flight from Porto and an Aegean Airlines flight from Thessaloniki, both to Milan, were searched upon arrival at Milan’s Malpensa airport. Also affected were a LOT Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw to Brussels, two Finnair flights from Helsinki to Rome and Vienna and four flights by other airlines to Prague. A Czech police spokesperson said: “Security measures at Prague airport have just ended, with pyrotechnic inspections yielding negative results.” The threats against the Finnair flights were “unfounded or hoax”, said an airline representative.
Threats are almost always unfounded.” The travel disruption followed cyber-attacks this week against supermarket refrigeration systems. Some analysts speculate the disruption, along with drone incursions and triggering of app alerts, is part of a hybrid campaign to unsettle Europe on behalf of Iran, Russia or other state actors. A Kremlin spokesperson said on Thursday it was “absurd” to blame Vladimir Putin’s administration for the hackers who targeted fridges.
Many of the affected flights on Thursday were operated by low-cost carriers but there was little discernible pattern surrounding the incidents. The Italian news agency Ansa, citing police sources, said the warning for the Helsinki-Rome and Dublin-Rome flights came from an anonymous email written in Italian and sent to the Rome airport company, ADR, and other affiliated companies. The subject heading was “segnalazione minaccia” (“threat warning”).
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