Bomb threats affected at least 12 European flights on Thursday. These incidents occurred after seven similar cases earlier in the week, in which no explosives were found.
Impact on Irish and other airlines
Ireland's airline, Aer Lingus, announced that one of its flights from Dublin to Rome was diverted to an airport in France due to a security threat. The French Prime Minister's office, led by Édouard Philippe, stated that the plane landed safely in Eure-et-Loir, northwest of Paris, and its 157 passengers disembarked safely.
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According to reports, two other flights were also diverted on Thursday due to similar warnings: a Wizz Air flight from Milan to Warsaw, which was redirected to Vienna, and a Ryanair flight from London to Sofia, which was rerouted to Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
Security checks following the threats
Finnish airline Finnair told local media Yle that two planes from Helsinki heading to Rome and Vienna were subjected to police checks after landing. The flight to Rome was also escorted by Italian fighter jets.
Another bomb threat affected a LOT flight from Warsaw to Brussels Airport on Thursday morning. A spokesperson for the airport, Ihsan Chiva Lekli, told a Belgian newspaper that police conducted searches and no further security measures were necessary.
Two other Ryanair flights heading to Sofia, one from Copenhagen and the other from Madrid, were also targeted by bomb threats. Czech police reported that four flights to Prague Airport were also threatened, but officers assessed the severity of the threats as "low."
Earlier in the week, seven passenger planes in Spain, Poland, Italy, and Bulgaria were inspected following bomb threats. No explosives were found, but these alerts led to the temporary closure of Czech and Warsaw airports.
Richter, CEO of JACDEC, an aviation safety analysis company, stated that the likelihood of someone successfully smuggling a bomb onto a plane is low. He remarked, "Today, it is hard to imagine a way to get explosives onto a commercial flight."
Richter added, "The last real bombing on a flight occurred on October 31, 2015, on a flight from Egypt to Russia, which was due to security lapses and personnel shortages that were immediately rectified."
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