The skies over Europe felt suddenly smaller, and for thousands of travellers, a routine journey turned into a nerve-wracking ordeal of uncertainty, delays, and fear. On Thursday and Friday, a wave of bomb threats swept across the continent, forcing commercial flights to be diverted, grounded, and in some cases escorted by fighter jets. The alerts struck planes departing from at least 16 countries, including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Denmark, and they rippled through major airports from Lisbon to Warsaw to Copenhagen. Authorities scrambled bomb disposal teams and military aircraft in response, treating every warning as credible enough to warrant emergency measures. Yet after all the fear, the emergency landings, and the security sweeps, no explosives or suspicious materials were found on any aircraft. No passengers were injured. It was a massive, coordinated disruption apparently built on hoaxes, and it left governments, airlines, and travellers grappling with a stark reality: a handful of anonymous messages could throw European air travel into chaos for days at a time. For passengers, the human cost was visible in packed waiting areas, missed connections, and the quiet anxiety of not knowing whether the plane they were sitting on was truly safe.
The second day of disruption was especially intense. By midday on Friday, at least 17 flights had been disrupted across the region. Hungary scrambled fighter jets three times to escort aircraft through its airspace after receiving bomb alerts. One of those flights was a WizzAir service travelling from Brussels to Sofia in Bulgaria; another was a flight from Prague to Bucharest; a third was heading from Prague to Cyprus. The Bulgarian transport ministry acknowledged receiving alerts concerning two incoming flights to Sofia, adding to the sense that no single airline or route was being targeted. Prague airport confirmed that nine flights had been affected by bomb threats that morning alone, a staggering number for a single day. In Portugal, a Ryanair flight landed in Lisbon shortly after 8 a.m. following a bomb threat made by phone to authorities; a full security operation was mounted as soon as the aircraft touched down. In Italy, the control tower at Fiumicino Airport in Rome received an alert about a device aboard a Wizzair flight flying from Paris to Rome. That plane was diverted to Venice, where police cleared the area around the aircraft and passengers were slowly taken off under watchful eyes. Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, police announced after extensive security checks at the airport that there was no danger to passengers. Everywhere, the pattern repeated: a threat, a scramble, a search, and eventually a sigh of relief—but not before hours of lost time and considerable fear.
The preceding day had been just as chaotic, with a long list of incidents that showed how widespread the campaign had become. In Poland, authorities received a warning about a potentially dangerous object on board a Polish Airlines flight already taxiing on the runway at Warsaw Chopin Airport. The flight to Paris was stopped on the tarmac, passengers were disembarked, and security services swept the aircraft—only to find nothing. Another LOT flight from London Heathrow to Warsaw-Chopin was forced to land at a different airport, Warsaw-Modlin, after a separate threat also proved empty. The Italian Air Force escorted a Finnair plane into Rome after an anonymous bomb-threat email was sent to the operators of Fiumicino and other companies at the airport; the plane landed safely. In Bulgaria, a Ryanair flight from London to Sofia was diverted to make an emergency landing in Plovdiv, the country’s second city, following yet another bomb threat. Spain’s Guardia Civil reported receiving three emailed threats in just 20 minutes, targeting two Air Europa departures from Madrid to Paris and four inbound Iberia flights from Rome and Milan. In Ireland, a flight from Cork was delayed for 90 minutes after the airport received a threat. In Italy and Belgium, a Ryanair flight from Pescara to Charleroi was subject to a false bomb alarm, with local media reporting that security protocols had been triggered after the word “bomb” was found written in one of the aircraft’s restrooms. None of these warnings turned out to be real, but each one forced authorities to act as if it were.
Behind every such alert lies a carefully designed protocol that prioritises safety above all else, even when the threat seems unlikely. When an airline is notified of a potential danger to an aircraft, the information is passed to a team of assessors, according to Joji Waites, director of flight safety, policy and regulation at BALPA, the British Airlines Pilots’ Association. These assessors use standard processes to grade the threat, deciding whether it is red, meaning credible; amber, meaning partially credible; or green, meaning not credible. But as Waites pointed out, an amber assessment is not considered appropriate if the plane is already airborne; once a threat is received in flight, the overriding priority is to get the aircraft on the ground and away from populated areas. The plane is directed to a remote stand or an isolated area far from airport buildings, passengers are disembarked and screened, and border police with sniffer dogs move through the cabin and cargo holds, checking every corner for suspicious materials. It is a heavy, expensive, and exhausting process, and it is repeated every time a hoax comes in. These incidents were not isolated oddities. Earlier in the week, a flight from the UK to Bulgaria was diverted after a baseless threat on Monday, and on Tuesday seven planes across Europe were searched or diverted because of malicious hoax alerts. In the same week, several European cities saw cyberattacks on supermarkets, with hackers remotely adjusting refrigeration temperatures in an apparent attempt to spoil food. The combination of threats in the sky and digital sabotage suggested a deliberate campaign to cause widespread disruption and public anxiety.
Experts say that while bomb threats to airlines are not new, the scale and coordination of this outbreak are highly unusual. Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University, noted that individual airlines experience bomb threats regularly, but most are quickly evaluated and found to be non-specific, meaning the aircraft do not divert. What changed this time, he explained, was that authorities in multiple countries appeared to treat the threats as credible enough to force landings and full security inspections. That is an immensely costly decision. Each disruption can cost an airline as much as $250,000, not counting the ripple effects of delayed fleets, stranded passengers, and lost crew schedules. The UK government described the latest wave as “malicious hoax threats,” a phrase that captures both the cruelty and the futility of the attackers’ actions. Even London Heathrow, the busiest passenger airport in Europe and one of the most heavily fortified and secure travel hubs in the world, was targeted. Heathrow insisted that its aviation safety systems are among the most robust anywhere, but the incident underscored an uncomfortable truth: security measures can prevent many dangers, but they cannot simply ignore a threat, no matter how absurd it may seem. Every warning must be examined, every plane must be checked, and every passenger must be protected, even when the call is a hoax. That is the price of safety, and in times like these it is paid again and again.
Who is behind this wave of fear and disruption? The honest answer, for now, is that no one knows. The European Commissioner for Transport said it is too early to say who is responsible, or even whether the incidents are connected. European governments have largely refrained from pointing fingers, but in a continent thick with geopolitical tension, suspicions are hard to avoid. Countries that have supported Ukraine are particularly wary of hybrid attacks—deliberate, shadowy operations designed to destabilise and sow fear without using conventional military force. Germany has already directly accused Russia of being behind recent drone incursions that forced the temporary shutdown of Leipzig-Halle Airport, a charge Moscow rejected. Danish intelligence warned in September that Russia could intensify such hybrid activities in an effort to pressure Western adversaries and NATO members. But when it comes to the aviation bomb threats, Moscow has denied any involvement, and so far there is no public evidence linking Russia, Iran, or any of their proxy groups to the hoaxes. For ordinary passengers, the identity of the culprit almost matters less than the overwhelming unease of watching fighter jets roar alongside passenger planes and waiting on runways while police dogs sniff through luggage. The disruptions may have been false alarms, but they succeeded in making travel feel fragile again. The real task now, as officials across Europe try to understand the motives and origins of these threats, is not only to catch whoever is responsible but to find ways to protect a system that cannot afford to take any danger lightly—even when the danger turns out to be a lie.