Bomb threats hit seven passenger planes across Europe; searches find no explosives

Seven passenger planes have been searched across Europe on suspicion that bombs were on board. Two of the planes had departed from the United Kingdom. After a series of bomb threats, authorities in the countries concerned carried out the searches as a precaution.

A source at Rome’s Fiumicino airport in Italy said two Ryanair planes were searched after an anonymous message was received. One had arrived from Dublin in Ireland and the other from Lisbon in Portugal. Both planes were searched after landing in Rome, but no explosives were found on either.

The plane from Dublin was escorted by the Italian air force until it landed. Planes were also searched because of the same kind of threat in Poland, Spain and Bulgaria.

So far no link has been found between the bomb threats. Authorities in the different countries are working together to examine whether the incidents were carried out in a coordinated way, or whether the aim was to disrupt air travel.

The UK government has described them as “deliberate hoax threats.” In a statement, the British government said the UK has some of the strictest aviation security in the world and has tested measures to deal with any possible threat, including measures for dealing with such deliberate hoax threats.

Aviation security expert Paul Mason said bomb threats against passenger planes are not received very often, so the recent incidents are unusual. He told BBC Radio 5 Live that so many threats did not arrive by coincidence; rather, a person or a group carried them out in a planned way.

Mason said that to check how credible a threat is, the crew inside the plane and staff on duty at the airport have to go through a number of procedures. A plane may be ordered to land at another airport. In some cases the plane’s crew are not even told what kind of situation the officials in the control room are dealing with.

The Fiumicino source told the BBC that members of the police bomb disposal team there carry out regular security searches to ensure the safety of passengers and crew. Passengers, their luggage and the plane were searched and no explosives were found. The alert was later lifted.

Spanish authorities said a plane made an emergency landing in Murcia in the south of the country because of a threat. No explosives were found on that plane either. The Ryanair plane had come from Manchester in the United Kingdom.

A passenger on that plane later said she had known nothing about the bomb threat until the landing. The passenger, named Sara, told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Throughout the journey we were told nothing. The plane suddenly stopped. Then we had to wait on the runway for about 30 minutes.” She said: “Then fire service vehicles came, bomb disposal team members came. We were told to get off the plane.”

Two more Warsaw-bound planes in Poland had their journeys disrupted because of bomb threats. One had departed from London’s Heathrow airport and was due to land at Warsaw’s main Chopin airport, but was diverted mid-journey to Modlin airport. Modlin airport’s operations had to be closed for some time as a result. Meanwhile, a Scandinavian Airlines plane travelling from the Danish capital Copenhagen to Warsaw’s Chopin airport landed on schedule despite a threat.

Bulgaria’s transport minister Georgi Piv said at the end of the day on Tuesday that two planes bound for the capital Sofia had received bomb threats. He told the state news agency, the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), that the two planes had come from Bergamo in northern Italy and from the Irish capital Dublin. Even after the threats, the two planes did not have to be sent to another airport; they were searched and no explosives were found.

Bulgaria’s border police said in a statement sent to the BBC that they received an email at 10:35am local time. It said there was a “handmade explosive device” on a plane returning from Bergamo. The same email also mentioned the same kind of threat against another plane arriving from Dublin.

A day earlier, a Wizz Air plane that had departed from London’s Luton airport made an emergency landing in the Hungarian capital Budapest after a bomb threat. A Hungarian fighter jet escorted the plane as it came in. Wizz Air later said the plane had been searched and no explosives were found.

BBC Verify spoke to aviation security experts to learn what measures are taken inside a plane after a bomb threat. Marco Chan, a former Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong Airlines pilot who now teaches at Kingston University in the UK, said that when a threat is received that a bomb is on a plane, it is treated as a real threat, and the alert remains in place until the matter is resolved, although in most cases such threats prove to be hoaxes.

Chan said crew members quietly search the toilets, the galley areas and the places where luggage is kept. If a suspicious object is found it is not touched; but if it has to be moved, it is taken to the designated least-risk place for a bomb inside the plane. Terry Tozer, another former pilot and aviation security analyst, said a pilot has to consider what security and other facilities exist at the airport to which the plane may be sent, and also think about how the journey to the destination can be resumed from there if the threat proves to be a hoax.