Several flights across Europe have been disrupted by bomb threats for the second time this week, with aircraft bound for Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Austria and Czechia affected, the BBC reports.
Among the incidents, an Aer Lingus flight travelling from Dublin to Rome was diverted to Evreux air base in northern France on Thursday morning, November 5, 2026, as a security precaution. The airline said the aircraft landed safely and that it was working to get passengers to their final destination as quickly as possible.
In a separate incident, Italian fighter jets escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome. The aircraft landed at its destination as scheduled.
The latest wave of threats comes days after at least seven European flights, including two from the UK, were targeted by suspected bomb threats. Searches were carried out on the aircraft, but no explosives were found, the BBC report added.
UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander described the incidents as “malicious hoax threats,” adding that established security protocols were in place to manage potential risks.
Aer Lingus confirmed that flight EI402, operating from Dublin to Rome, diverted to Normandy “as a security precaution.”
Authorities have not confirmed whether the latest threats are connected to those reported earlier in the week.
According to the report, the following flights were targeted by threats on Thursday:
An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome diverted to a French airbase
Two Finnair flights which departed Finland's capital, Helsinki, landed at their destinations as normal, the airline said. One was escorted into Rome's Fiumicino airport by Italian Air Force fighter jets, Aeroporti di Roma told the BBC, while the other landed in Vienna, Austria.
Wizz Air said two flights which departed Milan, northern Italy, were affected - one was heading to Warsaw, Poland before diverting to Vienna; the other landed safely at Bucharest's Henri Coandă Airport, with teams inspecting the aircraft
Polish airline LOT flight from Warsaw to Brussels, Belgium, landed as planned - the airline said "no suspicious items were found"
Three Ryanair flights have landed in Bulgaria, according to Bulgarian media - one from Copenhagen and another from Madrid landed in the capital Sofia, while a third coming from London bound for Sofia landed in Plovdiv. The flights were escorted by Bulgarian air force fighter jets
No explosives were found on four flights which landed in Prague, Czech police said.
An Aegean Airlines flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, and a Ryanair flight from Porto in Portugal landed safely in Milan as planned, with bomb disposal experts checking them on arrival, Italy's Ansa news agency reported
Marco Chan, an aviation expert Kingston University, told the BBC this week's bomb threats were "most likely a hoax, but the system is right to treat it as real".
He said the threats were being viewed by some experts as "possibly part of a pattern of cheap, deniable disruption" to air travel.
Hoaxes can also come from copycats, he said, but "three days of incidents is too small a sample to separate coordination from contagion".
On Tuesday, seven planes were searched after bomb threats were made.
Two were from the UK - one travelling from Manchester which landed in Murcia, Spain, the other from London Heathrow to Warsaw, Poland.
Two Ryanair flights - one leaving Dublin and the other from Lisbon - were searched after landing in Rome following anonymous tips but no explosives were found, sources at the city's Fiumicino airport told the BBC.
On Monday, a Wizz Air flight travelling from London Luton Airport to Sofia was escorted by a Hungarian fighter jet to Budapest after a mid-air bomb threat.
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