Seven passenger planes were inspected after suspected bomb threats, including two flights heading to Warsaw Chopin airport. One of the flights, a Ryanair service from Manchester to Murcia, later cleared Spanish checks after no explosives were found on board.
Two Ryanair flights, one from Dublin and one from Lisbon, were searched after landing in Rome, where police bomb disposal experts carried out standard security protocols. The Dublin flight was escorted by the Italian Air Force until landing, and inspections of the passengers, luggage and the aircraft in Rome yielded negative results.
Rome, Poland and Bulgaria
Authorities in Poland, Spain and Bulgaria also searched aircraft after the series of suspected bomb threats. Two of the four flights were en route to Warsaw Chopin airport, linking the checks in more than one country to the same security response.
Paul Mason said bomb threats on passenger planes do not happen that frequently and called the incidents unusual. He added: "It sounds like they've been made in a credible manner across a broad range of airlines" and said, "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."
Sarah on the Murcia flight
Sarah, a passenger on the Murcia flight, said she was unaware of the threat until after landing. "We weren't told anything during the flight," she said. "The plane stopped quite suddenly and then we were kept on the runway for around 30 minutes."
She said: "Then the fire engines turned up, the bomb squad turned up and we were asked to evacuate." Authorities in several countries are now cooperating to assess whether the incidents were coordinated, even as the UK government described them as malicious hoax threats. For passengers on the affected flights, the immediate issue is that the aircraft have been checked and cleared, while the open question is which specific flights were the ones routed toward Warsaw Chopin airport.
