Two days, at least eight airliners, zero explosives. A string of bomb threats against passenger flights kept European security services busy on Monday and Tuesday, and every single one turned out to be false. Nobody was hurt, but passengers sat through diversions, searches and long waits on remote stands while police worked out who might be behind the calls.
The first case came on Monday. A Wizz Air jet bound for Sofia had left London Luton at 8.33am when a threat came in; tracking data placed the jet above Bosnia as it swung north for Budapest. A Hungarian Gripen fighter shadowed it in, according to the country’s defence chief Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, while fire engines lined up beside the runway. Once police had gone through the cabin, the hold and the passengers, the airline reported that the search had come up empty.
Tuesday brought a cluster. In Poland, a LOT flight from Heathrow due at Warsaw Chopin was sent to the smaller Modlin airport instead, which shut briefly during the search before reopening. An SAS plane from Copenhagen landed in Warsaw as planned and was also cleared. In Sofia, two arrivals were on the list, according to Bulgarian officials: a Ryanair service from Dublin carrying 185 passengers and a Wizz Air flight from Bergamo with 176.
Italy’s air force escorted a Ryanair flight from Dublin all the way to Rome, where a second Ryanair plane, from Lisbon, was searched too. Spain had its own scare when a plane that took off in Manchester was met by a bomb squad in Murcia; Madrid’s representative in the region, Francisco Lucas, later wrote that a real device was “ruled out”.
No one has claimed responsibility. The timing has drawn attention: on Monday, hoax bomb alerts also reached 279 schools across Italy, forcing evacuations. For now, the only confirmed damage is to timetables, and to the nerves of thousands of travellers.
