Hoax Bomb Threats Hit European Air Travel Again, With No Hard Evidence Yet on Who Is Behind Them

Warnings have come in thick and fast across Europe, targeting one airline or airport after another. In nearly all cases they were taken to be credible enough to divert the aircraft in question, and in Italy's case even to scramble fighter jets to escort it.

London's Heathrow airport was a notable exception, where a threat was not treated as credible enough to divert an aircraft. In almost every other case, the warnings were acted on.

They all turned out to be false. That does not, of course, mean that the next ones will not be real.

The simultaneous, coordinated nature of the airline hoaxes, coupled with other malicious actions across Europe, is causing some people to point the finger of suspicion at Russia.

Following a series of cyber-attacks and mysterious drone sightings over sensitive sites earlier this year, the past few days have seen the remote hacking of supermarket freezers as well as a blood bank, a suspicious incident on Poland's border with Russia, and in August a drone attack on Germany's Leipzig Halle airport which its interior minister publicly blamed on Moscow.

Many argue, based purely on circumstantial evidence, that this must be another example of hybrid, grey-zone or sub-threshold warfare — actions that damage a nation's infrastructure or society but tend to be anonymous and deniable, and fall short of triggering Nato's Article 5.

Moscow is furious with Nato for supporting Ukraine. Russian bloggers have also suggested that if Ukraine's drones are making Russia's airports unsafe, and Western sanctions are blocking Russian airlines from European airspace, then Western nations should feel the same pain.

But as of Thursday evening, no hard evidence had emerged linking the airline hoaxes to Russia, Iran or any proxy groups controlled by them.

There was also the email threat sent on Thursday morning to airport authorities in Rome, purporting to be from 'Fighters of the Male State'. That name likely refers to the Russian group Muzhskoi Legion or 'Male Legion', an ultra-right group banned by a Moscow court in 2021.

The group retained tens of thousands of online followers on Telegram as it cheered on the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in the following year.

But even if the Rome email is genuine — and it could be another group hiding behind that name — it is unlikely to provide the leads police and airport authorities need to pin down who is generating these hoaxes and why.

For national police forces, airport authorities and transport ministries, the task is not to go with who they think might be the most likely culprits, but instead to follow the cold, hard leads — if they can find them.