Bomb threats against European flights ‘likely a coordinated campaign of disruption’, Ireland says – Europe live

I keep monitoring the situation on European airports for you. During an earlier disruption at Venice airport (11:33), a number of planes had to be diverted elsewhere: Brussels Airlines’s flight from Brussels and KLM from Amsterdam went to Trieste, whereas Air France’s service from Paris, Iberia’s service from Madrid, and Aegean’s from Athens went to Bologna.

Some of them have since completed their journeys flying back to Venice.

The Irish government has warned against a “likely coordinated campaign of disruption” in a statement responding to the latest bomb threats against European flights after similar threats were issued against some Irish media organisations (11:22). In a statement, it said: “The threats made this morning against media organisations here are very serious.

Hoax threats such as these cause fear, distress and disruption to people going about their daily lives and activities; they achieve no positive purpose whatsoever. It is not known yet who is responsible for these threats, whether it is individuals or a centralised or coordinated effort.

However, these 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 continued: “The Gardaí, working in cooperation with the Defence Forces, and our cyber and aviation authorities, are working to establish who is responsible. The Gar

The Dutch military police has confirmed that it has checked a KLM flight to Amsterdam faced with a bomb threat and confirmed that no explosives were on board.

The statement did not identify the exact flight, but we know that a flight from Prague to the Netherlands was among the nine that saw bomb threats in Czech Republic, and local Dutch media said the affected flight was coming from the Czech capital, which means it was the flight KL1350.

While the number of bomb threats issued against European planes can sure be unsettling, it’s worth remembering it’s still a tiny, tiny, fraction of all flights taking place in Europe today. Eurocontrol’s daily counter says there will be 26,709 flights in Europe today.

Hungary’s fighter jets have been scrambled three times this morning to escort civilian flights in Hungarian airspace after reported bomb threats, defence minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi said on Facebook.

He said the first alert came in response to a threat issued against a WizzAir flight from Brussels to Sofia (that’s the W64328 we reported on earlier at 12:58), and two more for flights from Prague to Cyprus and Bucharest (the latter one is the Tarom we reported on earlier at 12:16). Looking at Prague’s departures board, the Cyprus flight will be Wizz Air’s W64600 to Larnaca.

The Prague airport has confirmed to the Guardian that nine flights have been affected by bomb threats so far today, one up from the latest update (12:26). “The Police have taken the necessary security measures in response. Operations at Prague Airport remain unaffected,” a spokesperson said.