Bomb threat in European skies. This Thursday, an Airbus A320 providing the Dublin-Rome connection had to change its trajectory to reach a military base in Évreux, in Eure. This is flight EI402, which left the Irish capital at 6:25 a.m. with 151 people on board. Sébastien Lecornu’s services indicated that they were monitoring the situation “in real time” according to the procedures provided for this type of incident. Escorted by a Rafale, the aircraft landed safely around 10 a.m.
On Flight Radar, a site specializing in live flight monitoring, we see the aircraft turning around towards Évreux, while it was above the Essonne. The plane transmitted squawk 7700, an international transponder code used by an aircraft to signal a general emergency allowing instant notification to air traffic controllers and automatic priority for trajectories, radar guidance, weather and landing.
Serial false alerts
This Tuesday, around ten commercial flights in Europe were the target of bomb threats, which turned out to be false. Four of them concerned the Irish Ryanair line: an aircraft linking (already) Dublin and Rome, one between Dublin and Sofia, a Lisbon-Rome and a Manchester (England)-Murcia (Spain). The other planes affected belonged to the companies LOT, SAS and Wizz Air.
False alarms, but which led to major security checks, brief airport closures and aircraft diversions. At Rome-Fiumicino airport, two Ryanair planes underwent mine clearance operations following an anonymous alert. The one coming from Dublin was also escorted in the air by Italian Air Force fighter planes.
In Bulgaria, two aircraft arriving in Sofia were also subject to inspection. According to the Hungarian border police, the alerts were sent directly to the Ministry of the Interior by email. This Tuesday, the Wizz Air flight from London to Sofia (Bulgaria) was urgently diverted to Budapest by two Hungarian Air Force fighters.
