False bomb alarms on multiple European flights, no device found

Two Ryanair aircraft, arriving from Lisbon and from Dublin, landed at Fiumicino airport at 9:40 and 10:44 respectively on November 3rd after possible explosive threats had been reported on board. This is reported by Corriere della Sera, according to which the checks by bomb disposal experts and law enforcement were concluded around noon without any device being found.

The day saw a sequence of similar episodes at other airports across the continent. TG La7 reports that a flight by the Polish airline LOT, departed from London Heathrow and bound for Warsaw with 181 people on board, was diverted to Warsaw-Modlin airport. Another Ryanair flight, from Manchester to Murcia, with 121 people between passengers and crew, made an emergency landing; in this case too no suspicious material was found.

The picture that emerges is one of a series of closely spaced alarms on different routes, all resolved without any real threat being confirmed.

The two available sources — Corriere della Sera, which reconstructs the dynamics at Fiumicino through the checks by bomb disposal experts and law enforcement, and TG La7, which gathers information from airport and security authorities on the flights diverted in other countries — cover distinct origins and allow for the reconstruction of a European picture of the matter, not just an Italian one.

It remains to be clarified, at the time of publication, whether the alarms recorded in the various cities are connected to one another or whether these are independent episodes: none of the sources consulted establishes an explicit link, and this newspaper does not presume one. The airport authorities involved have not yet released, according to what emerges from the cited sources, an overall assessment of the origin of the reports.

The operational outcome of the day, as far as the two flights that landed at Fiumicino are concerned, is that the bomb disposal checks were concluded around noon without any devices being found, while for the flights diverted to Warsaw-Modlin and for the emergency landing at Murcia, the security checks did not lead to the discovery of any threatening material.