Bomb threats force diversions of more than a dozen flights across Europe

Multiple flights across Europe were diverted or made emergency landings on Thursday after being targeted by bomb threats, authorities said, in a surge of incidents that followed a series of similar hoaxes earlier in the week.

More than a dozen flights departing from cities including Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Madrid, Milan and Warsaw were confirmed to have received threats. Most were redirected to other airports for emergency landings, while others were able to land safely at their planned destinations. So far, inspections have not turned up any hazardous or suspicious materials.

Such threats are not new, but the latest wave comes against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tensions and other disruptions, including attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems, drone incursions in Europe and mysterious triggers sent to alert apps. Authorities have warned that hybrid threats abound.

Czech police said searches of four planes that landed in Prague after bomb threats came back clear, without providing details on where those flights originated. In France, a flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to a military air base in Evreux in Normandy because of a bomb threat, the office of Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said. All 151 passengers and six crew members were safe, and military bomb disposal teams were examining the aircraft.

Several carriers were affected. A LOT Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw to Brussels landed at its destination, where inspections found nothing hazardous, the airline said. A Wizz Air flight from Milan to Bucharest also landed safely, according to airport spokesman Teo Postelnicu. A Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome touched down at Leonardo da Vinci airport at around 9:30 a.m., escorted by Italian air force fighter jets, an airport official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. An emailed bomb threat had been received, but police bomb disposal experts completed security procedures and found no explosives.

In Austria, a flight bound for Warsaw landed in Vienna after Polish authorities received a message containing what Lower Austria police spokesperson Stefan Loidl described as an abstract threat. Nothing was found and the plane continued on to Warsaw. Loidl said there was also an abstract threat to Vienna Airport concerning four other flights, which he declined to identify, though operations were not disrupted.

Polish authorities also checked a LOT flight that was about to depart Warsaw for Paris on Thursday morning after a threat was reported at Chopin Airport, airport spokesman Piotr Rudzki said. No threat was identified, though one runway was temporarily closed while standard security procedures were carried out.

Three Ryanair flights bound for Sofia, Bulgaria, were forced to make emergency landings because of onboard bomb threats. Two of them, arriving from Copenhagen and Madrid, landed safely at Sofia's Vasil Levski Airport, while a third, from London's Stansted Airport, was diverted to Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second-largest city, Plovdiv Airport CEO Krassimir Peshev said.

The incidents follow a string of hoax bomb threats earlier this week that targeted flights operated by LOT, Scandinavian Airlines, Wizz Air and Ryanair, prompting searches, diversions and, in one case, an escort by the Italian air force. Those hoaxes came after a plane headed for Bulgaria was diverted to Hungary over a similar threat, with no one injured. On October 19, a bomb threat forced an Austrian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Vienna to reroute to Bulgaria, and no explosives were found.

The surge comes a month after a copilot on an Israel-bound flydubai jet attacked the captain with an axe in an attempt to seize control and crash the plane. The attacked pilot managed to open the cockpit door, allowing Israeli passengers to tackle the Omani copilot while off-duty relief pilots took the controls and made an emergency landing. The incident prompted a review of Israel's security directives for incoming flights, and stringent new rules were announced this week, including a requirement that foreign and Israeli airlines submit crew information 48 hours before departure.