Bomb threats hit European flights for third day
Italian, French, and Bulgarian fighter jets scrambled Thursday as at least 14 European flights were hit by hoax bomb alerts for the third day this week, authorities and airlines said.
The hoaxes particularly targeted low-cost carriers and flights to or from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Italy.
Italian air force jets escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome while French fighters guided an Aer Lingus Dublin-Rome flight to a military base outside Paris. Bulgaria’s air force escorted three planes targeted by threats.
Three flights were diverted in all but all the jets landed safely with no explosives found.
More than 20 hoaxes have now been reported this week, with low-cost carrier Ryanair the victim of at least seven.
Three Ryanair planes headed for Sofia from Madrid, Copenhagen, and London Stansted were targeted by bomb threats, a spokesperson for the Bulgarian Ministry of Transport told Agence France-Presse (AFP) .
Two of the planes landed in Sofia but the flight from London-Stansted was diverted to Plovdiv Airport, east of the capital.
All three planes were later inspected, and no explosives were found, an interior ministry spokesperson told AFP.
A Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome was escorted to Rome by a fighter jet and checked by bomb experts, a Romes Fiumicino Airport spokesperson told AFP.
Finnair spokesperson Stiina Tuunanen aid another false bomb threat had targeted flight AY1471 from Helsinki to Vienna, without providing further information.
Unknown motives
After receiving a threat, a Wizz Air flight from Milan to Warsaw was rerouted to Vienna, the airline said, “in accordance with established safety protocols and procedures.”
Another Wizz Air flight from Milan to Bucharest landed at its destination safely, “following which a crisis unit was set up at Henri Coanda Airport,” the Romanian intelligence service said in a statement.
An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome was rerouted to France after a bomb threat. It was escorted by military aircraft to the Evreux air base west of Paris, French authorities said.
Four Prague-bound planes flown by Ryanair, Easy Jet, and Sky Express were the target of threats.
The origin and motives of the threats were unknown, but come amid a rise in hybrid attacks in Europe, sometimes linked by authorities to Russia or Iran.
France’s secretary general for defense and national security, Nicolas Roche, highlighted to parliament last month “the massing of hybrid attacks in all their diversity—sabotage, cyber, drones, espionage of course—that we are seeing take shape in Europe.”
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