Bomb hoaxes divert a dozen European flights for second time this week
An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome was escorted by French fighter jets to the Evreux air base on Thursday after a bomb threat, one of at least a dozen aircraft targeted across Europe in a single morning. The French prime minister’s office said 151 passengers and six crew were moved to safety. Flights to Sofia, Prague, Brussels, Warsaw, Vienna and Bucharest were also diverted or searched; nothing was found and no arrests have been reported.
Three Ryanair services to Bulgaria, two Finnair flights from Helsinki, a LOT Warsaw–Brussels service, Wizz Air flights from Milan and four aircraft bound for Prague appear in the Guardian’s tally, which stood at 14 by late morning; Al Jazeera put the number at about ten and the BBC at twelve, a count that moved through the day. Finnair called the threats “unfounded or hoax” and said one of its aircraft was escorted into Rome by a fighter jet; Czech police rated the credibility of their four threats as low and passed the case to counter-terrorism and cybercrime investigators. Aer Lingus described the diversion as “a security precaution”. It follows Tuesday’s wave, which the BBC now puts at eight flights, two of them from the UK, and the escort of a Luton–Sofia Wizz Air flight to Budapest on Monday; the British government has condemned “malicious hoax threats”. No one has claimed responsibility and no government has attributed blame.