Five passenger aircraft in Europe have received bomb threats within a span of slightly more than 24 hours, four of them on Tuesday, according to SVT Nyheter. The incidents prompted fighter escorts, emergency landings and police inspections across Hungary, Poland and Spain. No explosives have been reported found so far.
Why it matters
The cluster of threats comes in a short window and spans several countries and airlines, drawing a heavy security response at a time when aviation authorities treat any threat against a flight as credible until it is cleared. Each incident forced aircraft to divert or be met on arrival, tying up police and airport resources. At least one threat, against a flight bound for Bulgaria, appears to be part of a wider wave of threats against Bulgarian institutions, which raises questions about whether the incidents are coordinated.
How the incidents unfolded
The sequence began on Monday morning, when a Wizz Air flight traveling from London to Sofia in Bulgaria received a bomb threat while in the air. The aircraft was escorted by fighter jets to Budapest in Hungary, SVT Nyheter reports.
On Tuesday morning, an SAS plane flying between Copenhagen and Warsaw was also threatened. According to SAS communications chief Alexandra Lindgren Kaukji, speaking to SVT, the aircraft landed normally at the airport after the threat, all passengers disembarked, and Polish police took over the case. A person on board told the Danish outlet BT during the morning that the plane was standing still on a runway at Warsaw's Chopin Airport and that masked police officers were checking it. A spokesperson for Chopin Airport told the BBC that other air traffic was not significantly affected.
Shortly before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, a flight from London to Warsaw received a threat and had to land at Warsaw-Modlin Airport in Poland. In a press release quoted by SVT Nyheter, the airport said an alert about a bomb threat aboard a plane traveling between London Heathrow and Warsaw Chopin was triggered at 09:54, and a Boeing 737 MAX landed at Modlin at 10:01. Traffic at Modlin resumed after a closure of a couple of hours, but the section of the airport where the London flight landed remained closed.
Just before 1 p.m. on Tuesday, news came that a Ryanair plane flying from Manchester in the UK to Murcia in Spain had also been threatened. The aircraft and its passengers landed safely. About an hour later, the central government's regional representative, Francisco Lucas, said the plane had been inspected and no explosives were found, according to SVT Nyheter. Murcia Airport has returned to normal operations.
The fourth aircraft on Tuesday was flying from Israel to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. It was searched by police after a threat. According to the Bulgarian public broadcaster BNT News, cited by SVT Nyheter, the threat is one of several directed at various institutions in Bulgaria, and the country's anti-terror police are investigating.
A pattern of threats against institutions
The Bulgarian angle is the clearest indication that not all of Tuesday's incidents should be read as isolated. BNT News reports that the threat against the Israel–Sofia flight belongs to a broader set of threats against Bulgarian institutions, which anti-terror investigators are now examining. SVT Nyheter notes that in fast-moving news situations it can be difficult to confirm every fact, and that it reports what is known and what is not.
For airlines and airports, the practical response followed a familiar pattern: land the aircraft, isolate it, remove passengers, and hand the scene to police. That is what happened in Warsaw, where the SAS flight landed normally rather than making an emergency diversion, and in Murcia, where the search concluded without a find. The Wizz Air case on Monday was the most dramatic, with military aircraft scrambled to accompany the plane to Budapest.
What remains unclear is who is behind the threats, whether they are connected, and whether any of them were intended to disrupt aviation rather than to cause harm. None of the reporting cited indicates that any device was discovered.
What to watch
Attention now turns to the anti-terror investigation in Bulgaria and to whether European aviation and police authorities link the five threats. Further updates are likely as Polish and Spanish police conclude their examinations and as Bulgarian investigators report on the wider wave of threats against institutions.
