Bomb hoaxes top 50 flights this week as Ireland sees ‘coordinated campaign’
At least 18 more flights to or from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, France, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Britain were disrupted by hoax bomb threats on Friday, taking the week’s total past 50, and Dublin’s broadcasters were evacuated after emails warning of bombs. The Irish government said “it seems likely that this is a coordinated campaign of disruption”; investigators have found no evidence of a hostile state behind it, and nobody has been arrested.
Nine of Friday’s flights touched Prague, four crossed France, two were bound for Sofia and a Ryanair service from Lisbon to Rome was searched; Hungary scrambled fighter jets three times. Even so, Eurocontrol counted the day’s disruptions at 0.0674% of the 26,709 flights over Europe. An email to news outlets promised “this is only the beginning”, though the misogynist Russian group named in Thursday’s Italian threats, Male State, mocked any suggestion it was involved, and the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said it was not yet known whether individuals or a coordinated attacker were responsible, adding: “It shows how relatively simple it can be to cause disruption and undermine the normal operation of society.” Giorgia Meloni asked whether the hoaxes and cyber-attacks on refrigeration systems in at least seven countries were connected, saying “what is under attack are civilian infrastructures”. Armed gardaí were sent to RTÉ. The pattern has grown daily since one UK–Bulgaria flight on Monday; Thursday’s count is given as 14 by Eurocontrol and 21 by the Taoiseach, and Friday’s as 11 by the EU transport commissioner, so totals depend on the cut-off hour. Watch for the first arrest and Dublin’s summit security next week.