Update: European Airlines Face Second Wave of Aircraft Bomb Threats
European airlines suffered a second wave of bomb threats on Thursday that indiscriminately targeted companies from low-cost operator Wizz Air Holdings Plc to Finnish flag carrier Finnair Oyj, throwing air travel into disarray across a region already grappling with a series of security scares.
Among the flights affected was Aer Lingus Flight EI402 headed from Dublin to Rome, which was forced to make an emergency diversion to a military airfield in northern France. Finnair said two flights headed from Helsinki to Rome and Vienna got similar threats that turned out to be false.
Other carriers targeted included LOT Polish Airlines and Wizz, which was already at the receiving end of several threats earlier in the week. In the Czech Republic, police said they received bomb threats about four planes headed to Prague, and that the aircraft were searched after they touched down. Vienna’s main airport also received a warning about four flights, public broadcaster OFR reported.
Three Ryanair Holdings Plc flights headed to Sofia in Bulgaria from Madrid, Copenhagen and London were also targeted, a spokesperson for the Bulgarian ministry of transport said. Bulgarian MiG-29 fighter jets escorted the aircraft over Bulgaria’s airspace, the defense ministry said in a statement, and one of the flights was diverted to the city of Plovdiv.
Ryanair didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“To have this in a coordinated way, I don’t think we’ve seen this before,” Ben Smith, the chief executive officer of Air France-KLM, said on a call with journalists to discuss third-quarter earnings. “It’s unfortunate and we hope it won’t give our consumers any reason to slow down or reduce their travel plan.”
No pattern has emerged around the spate of threats this week, either with the carriers drawn in or the routes that were affected. Bomb threats are rare events and almost always end up being hoaxes or the act of copycats. On average, there are more than 30,000 flights a day in Europe’s skies.
But the unusual rise in bomb threats comes at a time of heightened geopolitical tension and freak disruptions in Europe, including repeat hacking attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems and drone incursions into the territory.
Getting any illegal items on board is extremely difficult given how airports are ring-fenced and passenger screenings on the ground have become ever-more sophisticated.
As a result aircraft disasters involving a bomb are exceedingly rare. Notable incidents include Pan Am Flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing all 259 people on board, in 1988, and a Russian passenger plane that was brought down by a an explosive device on board in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula in 2015, killing all 224 people on board.
Eurocontrol, the European coordinator of air traffic across the region, said it’s monitoring the situation and working closely with airlines, airports, air navigation service providers.
In Romania, authorities at Bucharest Otopeni Airport searched Wizz Flight WMT3064 after it landed from Milan with 182 passengers on board. The airport said it’s putting its safety protocol into practice, though other flights are still operating as usual.
At least seven flights were disrupted by bomb threats between Monday and Tuesday, leading to hundreds of passengers being diverted and fighter jets escorting some aircraft to airports. No explosives were found and the UK government called the incidents “malicious hoax threats.”
Wizz said Tuesday that authorities were first notified about the threats and passed on the alert to the airline, which then followed protocol.
Photograph: A Wizz Air Holdings Plc passenger aircraft; photo credit: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg
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