Bomb Hoaxes Hit European Flights a Third Day: What Officials Say

BRUSSELS, Nov. 5, 2026 — Hoax bomb threats disrupted at least 14 European flights on Thursday, the third day of such alerts this week, and fighter jets from Italy, France and Bulgaria escorted several airliners to the ground, AFP reported. The Guardian counted at least 15 flights. Every aircraft landed safely, and no explosives were found.

AFP says more than 20 hoaxes have now been reported this week, at least seven of them against Ryanair. No one has claimed responsibility for the flight bomb threats. “Any threats against civilians are unacceptable,” EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas wrote on X, adding that it was “too early to draw conclusions on whether the reported incidents are linked,” Euronews reported.

Day by day: what was hit

| Day | Flights targeted (reported) | Main incidents | Military response | |—|—|—|—| | Monday, Nov. 2 | 1 | A Wizz Air flight from London Luton to Sofia was diverted to Budapest after a midair threat | Hungarian Gripen jets escorted it down, Hungary’s defense minister said | | Tuesday, Nov. 3 | At least 7 (Al Jazeera, Guardian) or 10 (AFP) | Warsaw Modlin airport closed after a LOT flight from Heathrow was diverted there; a Chopin runway closed for an SAS flight; Ryanair landings in Rome and Murcia under bomb protocols; an Israel-bound cruise ship evacuated off Syros | Two Italian Eurofighters escorted Ryanair FR9611 from Dublin into Rome | | Thursday, Nov. 5 | At least 14 (AFP) or 15 (Guardian) | Aer Lingus Dublin–Rome diverted to Évreux in France; Ryanair London Stansted–Sofia diverted to Plovdiv; Wizz Air Milan–Warsaw diverted to Vienna; four Prague-bound and two Copenhagen flights threatened | Italian jets escorted a Finnair Helsinki–Rome flight; French jets guided the Aer Lingus jet; Bulgaria escorted three Ryanair planes |

The Tuesday details come from Al Jazeera, which drew on AFP and Reuters. It reported that the Greek Coast Guard evacuated the Panama-flagged cruise ship Crown Iris, carrying about 1,500 passengers and crew, and found no device. London’s Metropolitan Police said it had been made “aware of threats against … four aircraft due to depart from or arrive at Heathrow Airport” that day and identified no security issues.

How the threats arrived

The few technical details released so far point to email. Prague Airport spokeswoman Denisa Hejtmankova told AFP that the airport had received all of its threats in emails from anonymous addresses. The Guardian cites the Italian agency Ansa, which reported, citing police sources, that the warning about the Helsinki–Rome and Dublin–Rome flights came in an anonymous email written in Italian with the subject line “segnalazione minaccia” (“threat warning”).

National authorities played the threats down. “We perceive the credibility of the threats as low,” Czech police wrote on X. “Nevertheless, we are not underestimating the situation, and all necessary security measures have been activated.” Copenhagen police told AFP: “Our assessment is that there is no danger, and there has never been any danger, to passengers or anyone else at the airport.”

Bulgaria’s defense ministry described its escort missions as meant to “detect, identify and escort the aircraft.” Capt. Martin Drake, a former airline pilot who advises the British pilots’ union Balpa, told the Guardian that airlines grade each threat on a traffic-light scale and that crews receiving a red alert in flight will probably descend and divert to the nearest airport.

The question of who

No government has blamed any state for the flight threats. Al Jazeera noted that “no country pointed fingers,” and that Moscow and Tehran both deny running a hybrid campaign in Europe. The threats came in the same week as cyberattacks that shut down supermarket refrigeration systems in several European countries. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it “absurd” to blame Russia for those attacks, the Guardian reported.

Rhys Jones of Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation intelligence firm, told Reuters, as quoted by Al Jazeera, that seven confirmed bomb threats against flights in one day was exceptional. “The lack of clear target state, airline or route indicates that general disruption to aviation operations is the aim,” he said. He told the Guardian that the threats looked like “a reasonably chaotic campaign with no particular region targeted.”

Hoax bomb threats are not new in Europe’s security disputes. A Congressional Research Service report on Moldova lists “false bomb threats against voting sites in Europe” among the actions alleged against Russia-linked actors around Moldova’s 2024 election. A separate CRS report, Russian Hybrid Warfare Activities in Europe (August 2026), says ambiguity of attribution is a defining feature of hybrid tactics. In CRS’s words, “the goal is not to maintain total deniability but to ensure a level of ambiguity that complicates the target’s ability to definitively (or convincingly) prove attribution.”

Analysis: why it matters

A hoax costs its sender one anonymous email. Each answer costs much more: a diverted airliner, a closed runway, a fighter pair launched on short notice, and hundreds of passengers rebooked. Thursday’s alerts affected flights to and from 14 countries on the Guardian’s list and drew air force responses from three NATO members. That gap between the cost of sending a threat and the cost of answering it is why aviation security officials take even weak threats seriously, and why repeated hoaxes are a problem in their own right.

The second risk is fatigue. Jones warned that repeated hoaxes could weaken future responses through the normalization of threats. Police in Prague and Copenhagen already called the threats low-credibility within hours, and they still carried out every check. If one sender is behind all the alerts, the test is whether crews and police keep treating each one as possibly real.

On attribution, the honest answer today is that nobody knows. The EU’s transport chief says it is too early to say whether the incidents are linked. Europe does have documented cases of state-directed hybrid activity to compare against. On the same day, Poland’s internal security agency, the ABW, announced the arrest of six people. It said they worked for Russian intelligence and supplied military components to Russia. In that case, investigators named suspects and produced charges. Whether the flight hoaxes reach that standard will depend on what investigators in Italy, Czechia and elsewhere can trace from the emails. For now, any claim that a specific state is behind them goes beyond the public evidence.

Sources

• AFP: Bomb threats hit European flights for third day (Nov. 5, 2026)
• The Guardian: Bomb threats disrupt at least 15 flights across Europe
• Euronews: ‘Too early’ to say if Europe flight bomb threats linked, EU transport chief says
• Al Jazeera: Bomb threats disrupt flights across Europe, no explosive devices found (Nov. 4, 2026)
• Congressional Research Service: Russian Hybrid Warfare Activities in Europe, R49134
• Congressional Research Service: Moldova: Background and U.S. Policy, R48664
• Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW): Six detained over work for Russian intelligence (in Polish, Nov. 5, 2026)

Additional sources

• AP live coverage of the Nov. 5 diversions (lists Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Madrid, Milan and Warsaw among the cities whose flights were affected)
• Euronews: Poland arrests six suspected of spying for Russia and supplying its military (reports that the scheme ran from June 2023 to December 2025, moved shell casings and projectiles into Kaliningrad, and was worth more than 2 million zloty)
• Congressional Research Service: Russian Hybrid Warfare Activities in Europe, R49134 (quotes the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: “Russia often hides and denies its role, complicating U.S. efforts to counter it”)

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