European airports scramble after dozen flights receive fake bomb threats
Military escorts and emergency landings marked a busy day for European air traffic after authorities labeled the coordinated messages as malicious hoaxes.
By Yasmin Nasser ·
More than a dozen flights across Europe received bomb threats on Thursday, forcing emergency landings and military escorts in several cases. No suspicious or hazardous materials were found on any of the aircraft. British transport secretary Heidi Alexander described the incidents to broadcasters as malicious hoax threats.
The disruption occurred on the same day that authorities warned of increased geopolitical tensions in the region. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels, said the events were stress-testing how European governments and airport officials coordinate their responses. He suggested the goal of the senders was to sow chaos and uncertainty about the reliability of air traffic.
An email sent to one airline claimed to be from an anti-feminist group. An official from another European airport confirmed receiving a threat from a group using similar language. It remained unclear if the same group was responsible for both messages. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information publicly.
The most dramatic response involved an Aer Lingus flight traveling from Dublin to Rome. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu ordered warplanes to intercept the jet after the pilot did not cooperate with authorities as expected. The plane landed safely at a military air base in Evreux, France. The base went on high alert while bomb disposal teams examined the aircraft. Regional prosecutor Remi Coutin said the pilot and co-pilot were questioned about the incident.
Italian air force fighter jets escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome. Croatian defense ministry officials said one of their fighter planes intercepted the commercial jet in Croatian airspace before handing it off to Italian forces. Finnair stated that two of its flights faced unfounded hoax bomb scares. The second flight, operated by Jettime from Helsinki to Vienna, landed safely and was expected to return to service after an inspection.
Three Ryanair flights bound for Sofia, Bulgaria, also received military escorts. Two of the planes, one from Copenhagen and one from Madrid, landed safely in Sofia. The third flight, departing from London, was diverted to Plovdiv, which is Bulgaria’s second-largest city. Plovdiv Airport CEO Krassimir Peshev confirmed the safe landing. Czech police searched four planes that landed in Prague after receiving threats, but found nothing. A LOT Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw to Brussels and a Wizz Air flight from Milan to Bucharest also underwent inspections that turned up no threats.
Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University, estimated that each flight disruption could cost airlines as much as $250,000. He noted that costs include crews working overtime, replacement crews, and missed passenger connections. Governments would bear the cost of military escorts. Joji Waites of the British Airline Pilots’ Association said the industry uses proven mechanisms to handle such threats, including a red-amber-green color-coding system to grade the level of danger.
