Hoax Bomb Threats Hit More European Flights Friday as Hungary Scrambles Jets and Prague Reports Nine Flagged

Since the first hoax bomb threats hit about seven flights on Tuesday, Nov. 3, the alerts have kept coming. On Friday, Nov. 6, a fresh batch landed in Hungary, France, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Portugal and Italy.

No suspicious items have been found and no one has been injured.

Friday's alerts, country by country

Hungarian Defense Minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi said military fighter jets escorted three separate passenger planes through Hungarian airspace within an hour after each received a bomb threat. He named flights from Brussels to Sofia, Prague to Cyprus and Prague to Romania.

The office of French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said "four new bomb threats were made today against aircraft flying over French territory." The planes landed safely at Paris Orly, where bomb disposal experts carried out inspections. The office did not say which flights were involved.

At Prague's Václav Havel Airport, spokesperson Denisa Hejtmánková said nine flights were threatened. Four were arrivals, from Denmark, Spain and Britain among other points, and five were departures, to the Netherlands, Cyprus, Romania, Italy and Britain. Czech police said the measures had "a minimal impact on the normal operations at the airport."

Other targets included a Tarom flight from Prague to Bucharest and a Ryanair flight from Lisbon to Rome. Portuguese police said the Ryanair threat arrived while the aircraft was still inbound to Lisbon, and a Special Police Unit inspection found nothing. A Wizz Air flight bound for Rome was diverted to Venice, where passengers were evacuated after landing. Bulgaria's transport ministry said it received alerts about two flights coming into Sofia.

Copenhagen police went to the airport for a second consecutive day. They said they assessed there was no danger to passengers or anyone else at the airport.

By midday GMT Friday, at least 17 flights had been disrupted, according to a running count by Al Jazeera.

How big is the disruption?

Eurocontrol, the European air traffic authority, offers the smallest numbers. It said it knew of bomb threats against 14 flights on Thursday, which is 0.05% of the nearly 26,300 flights across the European network that day, and seven on Tuesday. It said it is working with airlines, airports and navigation service providers "to mitigate any disruption to air traffic flows."

Other tallies run higher. Counts of Thursday's targeted flights from news agencies reached nearly 30, and a Reuters-based count earlier in the week put Tuesday at 27. The gap likely reflects what each counter includes, such as flights threatened versus flights that diverted. Eurocontrol's figure covers only threats it was aware of.

Eoghan Corry, editor of Travel Extra, told Euronews the threats were "designed to disrupt" rather than likely to involve real bombs. "Nobody really has a chance of getting a bomb onboard," he said, noting that the last bombing in European civil aviation was Lockerbie in 1988. His criticism was aimed at the uneven responses from different airports and airlines to what he called a "blanket set of threats, weaponising disruption."

Newsrooms and the question of who is behind it

The threats also reached Irish media on Friday. RTÉ, the Irish Independent, Newstalk and Virgin Media were evacuated. Newstalk host Claire Byrne told listeners that staff were told to leave, then advised they could return because the warning was a hoax.

The Irish government said in a statement that the threats "come on the heels of the ongoing disruption to aviation around Europe caused by similar threats, and it seems likely that this is a coordinated campaign of disruption." It added that it is "not known yet who is responsible," whether individuals or a centralised effort. Gardaí, working with the Defence Forces and cyber and aviation authorities, are liaising with European counterparts.

Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Harris told Cork 96FM: "We don't yet know whether it's an individual behind this effort or some form of a co-ordinated effort." He called the situation serious and evolving.

No one has claimed responsibility. Some of the emails were signed by fighters of the "Male State," a name that matches a far-right movement in Russia, according to AFP, which said it has not confirmed any link between that movement and the messages.

The wave also comes as European officials have blamed Russia and Iran for "hybrid attacks" and sabotage, which Moscow and Tehran deny, according to Reuters. Neither those accusations nor the recent attacks on French supermarket refrigeration systems and drone incursions have been tied to the hoaxes by any investigator.

What comes next

Ireland is scheduled to host two days of high-profile European Union meetings in Dublin next week. The Irish government said Gardaí had weighed the risk of disruptive threats while planning for EU Presidency events and are now "exercising the relevant protocols." Whether the emails to flights and newsrooms trace back to one sender or several is the open question investigators in Dublin and across Europe are working on.