Seven European flights face bomb threats amid diversions and searches

Seven passenger flights across Europe were searched or diverted after suspected bomb threats on Tuesday, with two of the aircraft departing from the UK. No explosives were found in the checks reported at Rome, Murcia and Sofia, but no official link between the cases had been established.

Which seven flights were affected?

• Rome: Sources at Fiumicino airport said police bomb-disposal experts searched two Ryanair flights after arrivals from Dublin and Lisbon following anonymous tips. Checks of passengers, luggage and aircraft under standard security protocols returned negative results, and the alert was cleared. The Dublin flight received an escort from the Italian Air Force until landing.
• Murcia: A Ryanair flight from Manchester was searched after landing in southern Spain; Spanish authorities found no explosives. It was one of the two flights that departed from the UK.
• Warsaw: Planes in Poland were searched. Two flights bound for the Polish capital were affected, including one from London Heathrow. It was due at the main Chopin airport but diverted to the smaller Modlin airport, briefly forcing Modlin's closure. A Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen landed at Warsaw-Chopin as planned.
• Sofia: Two flights from Bergamo and Dublin received threats. Bulgarian authorities did not divert them and found no explosives when they checked the aircraft.

On the Manchester–Murcia service, passenger Sarah told BBC Radio 5 Live: “We weren't told anything during the flight.” She added: “The plane stopped quite suddenly and then we were kept on the runway for around 30 minutes.”

“Then the fire engines turned up, the bomb squad turned up and we were asked to evacuate,” Sarah said. She said the aircraft had been on the ground for less than a minute before it was “surrounded by fire engines and police and a bomb squad.”

Police escorted every passenger off, leaving all their belongings behind. Sarah added: “We were only later told that it was an actual threat, a bomb threat to the plane itself.”

Was this a coordinated attack?

Although officials had not linked the cases, authorities across the countries would cooperate to assess whether they represented a coordinated attack designed to disrupt airspace.

The UK government called the incidents “malicious hoax threats” and said it had “one of the most robust aviation security systems in the world, with well-tested processes for dealing with any potential threats, as well as malicious hoax threats, like those we've seen today.”

Aviation security expert Paul Mason said bomb threats on passenger planes “don't happen that frequently,” making the latest incidents “unusual.”

He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “It sounds like they've been made in a credible manner across a broad range of airlines. That would suggest to me that it's been a very deliberate act by a typical actor rather than a load of coincidental, malicious calls.”

He said “there are a lot of processes” that the onboard crew and people on the ground must go through “to validate the credibility of the threat.” A flight may be asked to divert if the credibility of a threat “is of a certain level,” Mason added. In some cases, crews may not be advised what ground operators were handling.

How does a bomb threat reach the cockpit?

Marco Chan, a former Cathay Pacific Airways and Hong Kong Airlines pilot now a senior lecturer in aviation operations at Kingston University, said a bomb threat is considered “genuine until it is resolved, even though most turn out to be hoaxes.”

Crews will “quietly search” toilets, galleys and storage areas, Chan said. They will not touch a suspicious item unless it has to be moved to the area designated as the aircraft's least risky bomb location.

Once on the ground, an aircraft generally is “taken to an isolated stand, passengers are disembarked, and police and bomb disposal teams search it,” he added.

Former airline pilot and aviation safety commentator Terry Tozer said captains also weigh what facilities are available at a diversion airport and how the aircraft can continue onward if the threat proves false.

The immediate cost was aircraft time and airport capacity: Modlin briefly closed, the Murcia aircraft stayed on its runway for around 30 minutes, and bomb-disposal teams searched aircraft at Fiumicino. A diversion also draws on an alternate airport's stand and handling resources while security teams resolve the report.

What triggered the Sofia alerts?

At around 10:35 (08:35 GMT), Bulgaria's border police received an email reporting “the presence of an improvised explosive device on a flight returning from Bergamo.” The same email reported a “similar threat against aircraft arriving from Dublin.”

Border police said: “Standard procedures for such incidents were immediately activated, and an operational headquarters comprising representatives of various institutions was convened.” The flights were not diverted, and no explosives were found when the aircraft were checked.

Bulgarian Transport Minister Georgi Peev told the state-owned Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) that the threats involved the two flights from Bergamo and Dublin.

What happened beyond the seven flights?

A separate bomb alert triggered the evacuation of 1,537 passengers and crew from the Israel-bound cruise ship Crown Iris in Greece, according to media reports from Greece and Israel. The Panama-flagged vessel was docked at a port on the Aegean island of Syros. Initial checks by the Greek Coast Guard found no explosives, and the ship was due to resume its journey.

One day earlier, a Wizz Air flight from London Luton made an emergency landing in Budapest, escorted by a Hungarian fighter jet, after a bomb threat. Wizz Air said security checks had found nothing.

The next test is whether investigators can connect the tips across borders; until they do, the seven flights remain a set of unlinked incidents, not a confirmed coordinated attack.