At least 15 more hoaxes, three diversions, no explosives: Europe's airspace answers with procedure

At least 15 European flights were targeted by bomb threats on Thursday, POLITICO reports, after seven similar incidents earlier in the week in which no explosives were found¹. Euronews, with AFP, counts more than 20 hoaxes this week, Ryanair the target of at least seven, and three diversions on Thursday, all of which landed safely².

The list reads like a timetable. An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome was escorted by French military aircraft to the Évreux air base, west of Paris; the 157 people on board were taken to safety, the French prime minister’s office said^1,2. A Wizz Air flight from Milan to Warsaw was diverted to Vienna, and a Ryanair flight from London Stansted to Sofia landed in Plovdiv^1,2. Italian jets escorted a Finnair flight to Rome; Bulgaria’s air force escorted three planes bound for Sofia². Prague Airport said the threats it received came by email from anonymous addresses, and Czech police judged their credibility “low”². Copenhagen police said there “has never been any danger” to passengers².

Who is behind it is not known. EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said it was “too early to draw conclusions” on whether the incidents are linked, and that the EU-level information-sharing mechanism for aviation security has been activated; “We don’t have information yet whether this is a cyber attack,” he said^1,2. Air France-KLM’s chief executive, Ben Smith, said the threats were coming “in a coordinated way”¹. Euronews notes they arrive amid a rise in hybrid attacks in Europe that authorities have sometimes linked to Russia or Iran². That is context, not attribution.

Here is the contrarian reading. A hoax works only if it produces panic or paralysis. Thursday produced neither. Airlines followed what Finnair called “a very clear process”, planes were searched, Aer Lingus set about rebooking its passengers, and one LOT flight left on a replacement aircraft^1,2. The EASA spokesperson put the trade-off plainly: the immediate safety threat from individual hoaxes is low, but more diversions place “additional strain on the system”¹. An aviation-safety analyst told POLITICO there is “hardly any thinkable way” today to get explosives aboard a commercial flight¹.

For you, a delay this week may be irritating. It is also the sound of the machinery doing its job: screening, escort, search, report. The threats are designed to be cheap. The answer is to keep the response boring, shared across borders, and paid for in advance.