Wave of false bomb threats: 27 flights in Europe and a 'weapon of disorganization'

Mass false bomb threats and airport responses

On Tuesday 27 European flights received bomb threats; all of them were reported to be false. The investigation is ongoing, and the EU transport commissioner said it was 'too early to draw conclusions' about whether the cases are connected.

Expert assessment: the goal is disruption

Travel Extra editor-in-chief Eoghan Corry, commenting to Euronews, described what is happening as a 'weapon of disorganization': in his view, the threats were 'designed to disorganize' rather than being genuine attempts at explosions. The greatest damage, he said, arises from the asymmetric responses of different airports to 'a single set of threats': each airport and airline applies its own set of protocols, which, however, 'are not so widely scattered' in their procedures.

How safe is European airspace

Corry stressed that European airspace is safe: over 40 years, he said, 'no one has managed to get a bomb on board an aircraft', and he named the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie as the last terrorist attack in European civil aviation. Airports, in his assessment, are 'very, very, very good at security', but the weak point is the escalation of threats: it is precisely the fragmented assessment and response of different airports that makes such campaigns effective.