The EU said on Thursday it was not yet clear whether a wave of bomb threats targeting European flights was linked and that it was monitoring events closely with national authorities.
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“Any threat against civilians is unacceptable,” European Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas told X, adding that it was “too early to draw conclusions about the link between the reported incidents.”
Brussels’ statement came after Italian, French and Bulgarian fighter jets scrambled as at least 14 European flights were hit by bomb threats for the third day of the week, authorities and airlines said.
The hoaxes particularly targeted low-cost airlines and flights to or from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Italy.
Italian Air Force planes escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome while French fighters guided an Aer Lingus Dublin-Rome flight to a military base outside Paris. The Bulgarian Air Force escorted three planes targeted by threats.
Three flights were diverted, but all planes landed safely with no explosives found.
More than 20 hoaxes have been reported this week, with budget airline Ryanair suffering at least seven victims.
Ryanair
Three Ryanair planes bound for Sofia from Madrid, Copenhagen and London Stansted were targeted by bomb threats, a spokesperson for the Bulgarian Transport Ministry said.
Two of the planes landed in Sofia but the London-Stansted flight was diverted to Plovdiv airport, east of the capital.
Air Force fighter jets escorted the three planes, the Defense Department said, saying these missions “detect, identify and escort aircraft.”
The three planes were later inspected and no explosives were found, an Interior Ministry spokesperson told the AFP news agency.
Finnair
A Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome was escorted to Rome by a fighter jet and checked by bomb experts, a spokesman for Rome Fiumicino airport told AFP.
A Finnair spokeswoman, Stiina Tuunanen, confirmed that “nothing unusual was found” when the plane landed.
Finnair has “a very clear process that we follow in situations like this and we always work closely with local authorities,” Tuunanen said.
She said another false bomb threat had targeted flight AY1471 from Helsinki to Vienna, without providing further information.
WizzAir
After receiving a threat, a Wizz Air flight from Milan to Warsaw was rerouted to Vienna, the airline said, “in accordance with established security protocols and procedures.”
Another Wizz Air flight from Milan to Bucharest landed safely at its destination, “following which a crisis unit was set up at Henri Coanda airport”, Romanian intelligence services said in a statement.
Aer Lingus
An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to France after a bomb threat. He was escorted by military planes to the Evreux air base, west of Paris, French authorities said.
“The flight landed safely and Aer Lingus will endeavor to re-accommodate customers at their final destination as soon as possible,” the airline said in a statement.
Prague and Copenhagen flights
Four planes from Ryanair, Easy Jet and Sky Express to Prague were also the target of threats.
“We assess the credibility of the threats to be low,” Czech police said on X. “Nevertheless, we do not underestimate the situation and all necessary security measures have been activated.”
Prague Airport spokeswoman Denisa Hejtmankova told AFP that the airport had received all email threats from anonymous addresses. It was not immediately clear which airlines were involved.
In the meantime, two planes that arrived in Copenhagen were also threatened.
“Our assessment is that there is no danger, and there has never been any danger, to passengers or anyone else at the airport,” Copenhagen police told AFP.
Who and why
The origin and motives of these threats are unknown, but arise in a context of an increase in hybrid attacks in Europe, sometimes linked by the authorities to Russia or Iran.
The Secretary General of Defense and National Security, Nicolas Roche, highlighted before Parliament last month “the multiplication of hybrid attacks in all their diversity – sabotage, cyber, drones, espionage of course – that we see taking shape in Europe”.
On Tuesday, 10 flights were the target of bomb threats, all of which turned out to be hoaxes.
The alerts forced the closure of a Warsaw airport and the deployment of Italian air force jets to protect flights.
On Monday, a Wizz Air flight from London Luton Airport to Sofia was diverted due to a bomb threat and forced to make an emergency stopover in Budapest.
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