Key facts
- An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome diverted to Évreux air base in northern France after a bomb threat.
- Italian Air Force fighter jets escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki into Rome's Fiumicino airport.
- Wizz Air said its Milan Malpensa to Warsaw flight was diverted to Vienna after a threat during the flight.
- Czech police said no explosives were found on four Prague-bound flights that received threats.
- The UK government described the earlier threats as "malicious hoax threats".
A second wave of bomb threats targeted European passenger flights on Thursday, forcing an Aer Lingus jet to divert to a military airfield in northern France and prompting Italy to scramble fighter jets, according to a BBC report. No explosives were found on any of the aircraft searched.
Aer Lingus said flight EI402 from Dublin to Rome "diverted to Normandy this morning as a security precaution" and landed safely. Italian Air Force jets escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki into Rome's Fiumicino airport, where it landed as scheduled, a spokesperson for Aeroporti di Roma told the BBC. A second Finnair flight from Helsinki to Vienna also landed normally.
Wizz Air said its flight from Milan Malpensa to Warsaw was diverted to Vienna after a threat was received during the flight. Another Wizz Air flight from Milan to Bucharest landed safely at 11:08 local time. A LOT flight from Warsaw to Brussels landed as planned, with the airline saying no suspicious items were found.
Three Ryanair flights landed in Bulgaria, according to Bulgarian media, and the Bulgarian air force said it carried out an air policing mission after threats to three flights. Czech police said four Prague-bound flights received threats but no explosives were found.
The disruption followed a similar wave on Tuesday, when at least seven flights were searched across Europe after suspected bomb threats, including two departing from the UK. On Monday, a Wizz Air flight from London Luton to Sofia was escorted by a Hungarian fighter jet to Budapest after a mid-air threat. The UK government described the incidents as "malicious hoax threats."
Marco Chan, a senior lecturer in aviation operations at Kingston University, told the BBC the threats were "most likely a hoax, but the system is right to treat it as real." He said experts view them as "possibly part of a pattern of cheap, deniable disruption" but that three days of incidents is too small a sample to separate coordination from contagion.