Multiple flights in Europe were targeted by bomb threats on Thursday, forcing emergency landings, searches and military escorts to airports in France, Italy and Bulgaria.
A British official called them “malicious hoaxes” that followed another rash of hoax threats earlier this week.
Because of a bomb threat, the French prime minister’s office said, a flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to a military air base in western France. All 151 passengers and six crew members were safe and military bomb disposal teams were examining the plane, the office said. The passengers aboard the Aer Lingus Dublin-Rome flight were questioned and checked in groups of 10 inside the airport, the prime minister’s office said.
The European Union’s Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said that “any threats against civilians are unacceptable,” and that the EU’s executive branch was in contact with affected member countries. He said that an EU level information-sharing mechanism on aviation security had been activated, and that “we don’t have information yet whether this is a cyberattack. The flight landed safely at the base in Evreux in Normandy, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office said.
An investigation was opened by French aviation security authorities. Nothing was found aboard Finnair AY1761, and the plane was scheduled to depart for Helsinki. Because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, it landed safely at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport at around 9:30 a.m., and no explosive materials were found during an inspection by police bomb disposal experts, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Italian authorities alerted France’s government to the bomb threat on the Aer Lingus flight, and a French warplane escorted it to the Evreux base, the prime minister’s office said. Italian air force fighter jets escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome after an email threat was received, according to an airport official with knowledge of the situation. Finnair said that two of its flights, including the one that landed in Rome, “faced unfounded hoax bomb scares. The three planes that made an emergency landing in Sofia and Plovdiv were escorted through Bulgarian airspace by fighter jets, the Ministry of Defense said.
