At least 15 flights were forced into emergency landings or diversions across Europe on Thursday morning after flights bomb threats spread through multiple countries. All of the affected flights landed safely, and some inspections found nothing suspicious.
Ryanair, Aer Lingus, WizzAir, FinnAir and LOT were among the airlines affected, with warnings hitting flights linked to Italy, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Finland, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Greece and Czechia. The scale matters for passengers because the disruption was not confined to one airport or one route; it hit several countries in the same morning.
Sofia, Plovdiv and Prague
Two Ryanair flights from Copenhagen and Madrid to Sofia made emergency landings in Sofia, while a Ryanair flight from London to Sofia was diverted and landed at Plovdiv. A Bulgarian government spokesperson said, “Upon landing, the necessary inspections were carried out in accordance with the applicable procedures and no issues were identified.” The same spokesperson said, “Airport operations at both Sofia airport and Plovdiv airport have returned to normal.”
In Prague, security measures at Prague airport ended with pyrotechnic inspections yielding negative results. Four flights by other airlines to Prague were affected, adding another layer of disruption to a morning already marked by diversions and searches across Europe.
Rome, Milan and Warsaw
An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome diverted to the Evreux military airbase in northern France, and a WizzAir flight from Milan to Warsaw diverted to Vienna. A Ryanair flight from Porto and an Aegean Air flight from Thessaloniki, both to Milan, were searched upon arrival at Milan’s Malpensa airport. A LOT Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw to Brussels was also affected.
Ansa said the warning for the Helsinki-Rome and Dublin-Rome flights came from an anonymous email written in Italian and sent to the Rome airport company, ADR, and other affiliated companies. The subject heading of the email was “segnalazione minaccia” (“threat warning”).
FinnAir and the wider pattern
Two FinnAir flights from Helsinki to Rome and Vienna were affected, and a FinnAir airline representative described the threats against the flights as “unfounded or hoax.” The same representative said, “Unfortunately, air traffic is sometimes subject to threats, as we have seen this week, when also other airlines in Europe have faced hoax bomb threats. Threats are almost always unfounded.”
The disruption came two days after seven planes across Europe were searched or diverted because of malicious hoax bomb alerts, and it followed cyber-attacks this week against supermarket refrigeration systems. Aviation experts said fake threats occur daily, but that such a multiplicity of threats is unusual, which is why the pattern has drawn attention even as individual alerts have not pointed to a single identified cause.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, separately called accusations against Vladimir Putin’s administration “absurd” and said, “We have such baseless accusations against our country, implicating it in everything,” after comments linking Russia to other cyber claims. Who was behind the bomb threats and whether the incidents were coordinated remains unanswered, and the practical response now sits with airport security teams, airline operations and the passengers waiting to rebook or continue on the same day.
