At least 22 flights across Europe were diverted, escorted or subjected to emergency security procedures on Thursday after bomb threats, according to The Guardian’s tally. All affected aircraft landed safely, and searches found nothing suspicious.
The operational effects varied by location. An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome diverted to Évreux airbase in France, while flights involving Ryanair, Wizz Air, Finnair, Aegean Airlines, Iberia, Air Serbia, LOT and other carriers were diverted, escorted or searched in countries including France, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Czechia and Serbia. DW reported that at least a dozen flights had been affected in its earlier account, including a Finnair flight that landed in Rome with a military escort and a Wizz Air service from Milan to Warsaw that made an unscheduled landing in Vienna.
The reports indicate incident-by-incident security responses at affected airports. In Bulgaria, three Ryanair flights bound for Sofia came under heightened security measures; one diverted to Plovdiv while two landed in Sofia, DW reported. Police in Madrid said three flights were affected by hoax threats, and Czech authorities prepared for four threatened arrivals while assessing the risk as low, the report said.
Authorities have not established who sent the warnings or whether the cases were coordinated. The EU transport commissioner said it was too early to determine whether the incidents were linked, DW reported, while The Guardian reported that there was no intelligence pointing to a particular state or group. Earlier threats against European flights this week had been assessed as hoaxes, but investigations into Thursday’s incidents remained ongoing.