Bomb alerts on at least 12 European flights, Warsaw runway closed after threat

Alerts across European flights

Bomb alerts were reported on at least 15 passenger planes in Europe on Thursday, 5 November, according to figures that Sky News and CBS News gathered and oko.press passed on. AFP counted at least 12 flights, some escorted by fighter jets and several forced to change course. The alerts were not isolated: on Tuesday, 3 November, at least seven planes in Europe received threats, and one more plane bound for Sofia had been threatened the day before, on Monday, 2 November.

Several Thursday diversions were described in detail. An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome was redirected to the Evreux air base in France. A Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome reached its destination under escort from Italian military aircraft. A Wizz Air flight from Milan to Warsaw was diverted to Vienna, and Milano Today reported that the threat there proved false. A Ryanair flight from London to Sofia was redirected to Plovdiv in Bulgaria.

Warsaw airports

On Tuesday, 3 November, a LOT Boeing 737 MAX flying from London Heathrow to Chopin landed unscheduled at Warsaw Modlin at 10:01 with 181 people on board. Passengers left the aircraft after it was parked in a designated area, and the airport suspended flights until noon. At about the same time, services checked an SAS aircraft that had flown from Copenhagen at Chopin, where one runway was closed while other operations continued, according to Interia.

On Thursday morning, LOT flight LO331 to Paris was due to depart at 7.20. As it taxied toward the runway, the pilot stopped the manoeuvre, first citing an operational problem and later saying the reason was safety, according to naTemat. Piotr Rudzki, spokesperson for Polish Airports (PPL), described the reason in a statement to TVN24.

“Information about a potentially dangerous item on board a LOT aircraft from Warsaw to Paris reached airport services. Standard security procedures were implemented.”

Rudzki said traffic was running on the second runway while services worked at the scene. Services reached the parked aircraft about 20 minutes later, and passengers were bussed back to the terminal. The alarm was called off around 10:00, according to naTemat.

Checks and unconfirmed threats

At Brussels Zaventem, LOT said its crew carried out an on-board check after receiving information about flight LO235 from Warsaw, and services inspected the aircraft again after landing. Krzysztof Moczulski, the carrier's spokesperson, said:

“As a result of this check, no suspicious items were found.”

Czech police judged the threats against four flights bound for Prague unlikely to be credible, yet all four aircraft underwent explosive checks, and no explosives were found. Bulgarian media, citing officials, reported three aircraft forced to land in Sofia. Services did not confirm the threats in the Tuesday cases at Modlin and Chopin, according to RMF24. LOT said the Paris flight would continue after a replacement aircraft was brought in.