The hoax bomb threats hitting European air travel reached newsrooms on Friday. Ireland’s public broadcaster RTÉ evacuated its Dublin campus and suspended programming after an emailed threat, and Bulgaria’s Nova TV received one too, Reuters reported. Sky said it was one of a number of media organizations that received a security threat, and that it had reported the matter to the authorities, according to ABC News and Reuters. Reuters said the newsroom emails came from a sender calling himself “Mikhail Andropov,” which appears to be an alias, under the heading “Message to the West.” It could not establish who sent them or whether they came from the same source as the threats against flights.
Flights were targeted again the same morning. A Ryanair flight from Rome to Lisbon was met by a security operation when it landed, after an anonymous phone call warned of a possible explosive device on board, Euronews and Reuters reported. A Wizz Air flight bound for Rome was diverted to Venice. Reuters and Euronews said it had left from Prague, while Al Jazeera said Paris. Hungary said it scrambled fighter jets three times to escort airliners through its airspace, Reuters reported. Al Jazeera counted at least 17 flights disrupted by midday GMT. Every plane threatened on Friday landed safely, and no explosives were found, according to Reuters.
No government has said who is behind the threats, and officials have not confirmed that the incidents are linked.
A week of threats
The wave began on Tuesday, Nov. 3, when seven planes across Europe were searched or diverted, two of them from the U.K., according to the BBC, CNBC and Al Jazeera. Reuters put that day’s count at about half a dozen. One threat briefly shut an airport outside Warsaw, Al Jazeera and Euronews reported.
Thursday was the worst day. Counts vary by outlet: at least 27 flights according to Euronews and Reuters, at least 25 in a later Euronews report and at least 21 aircraft according to the BBC. Al Jazeera said the disruption reached at least 10 countries, among them France, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Ireland, the U.K. and the Czech Republic.
An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome was escorted by French military aircraft to the Évreux air base in Normandy, west of Paris, Euronews and the BBC reported. A French prosecutor is examining whether the pilot refused to comply with French landing directions, CNBC reported. An Italian fighter escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki into Rome, where bomb experts checked it and found nothing unusual. Bulgarian jets escorted three airliners bound for Sofia, and the one from London Stansted was diverted to Plovdiv, Euronews and Al Jazeera reported. A Wizz Air flight from Milan to Warsaw was sent to Vienna.
No explosives were found on any aircraft searched during the week, according to Reuters, the BBC, Euronews and Al Jazeera.
Who signed the emails
Most of the threats came by email. Prague Airport said it received all of its threats from anonymous addresses, AFP reported, via Euronews. Aeroporti di Roma confirmed to the BBC that Thursday’s threats against two inbound flights arrived by email. The Rome and Milan emails were signed by “fighters of the Male State,” Reuters and the BBC reported. Reuters described Male State as a far-right, anti-feminist movement banned in Russia. Its founder, the Russian blogger Vladislav Pozdnyakov, told Reuters the group no longer exists and was not involved. Reuters could not confirm who sent the emails, and the BBC said that even if genuine, the signature was unlikely to give police much to work with.
Investigators in several countries have opened cases. Czech police said the national center against terrorism, extremism and cybercrime had taken over, and that they judged the threats’ credibility to be low, according to Al Jazeera and Euronews. Danish police are investigating threats at Copenhagen Airport, and France’s prime minister’s office said an investigation was underway to find the source of the alerts, Reuters and Euronews reported.
The hybrid-warfare question
European officials have been careful about blame. EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas wrote on X that it was “too early to draw conclusions” on whether the incidents are linked, Al Jazeera and Euronews reported. Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, went further. He told the broadcaster TVE that so many incidents with the same method could not be coincidence, and that the most reasonable assumption was “an attempt at hybrid aggression,” Reuters reported.
Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s technology commissioner, told Reuters that Russia is not always behind hybrid operations, but “quite often it is.” Moscow has denied any involvement in the threats to European aviation, according to Reuters and Al Jazeera. Britain’s transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, called Thursday’s incidents “malicious hoax threats,” the BBC and Al Jazeera reported.
The threats come after a string of sabotage attacks and attempts across Europe that officials in several countries have tied to Russia. We covered U.S. intelligence’s account of one of them in Leipzig Drone Plot Opened Putin’s Sabotage Push, U.S. Intel Says. Nothing made public so far connects this week’s emails to that campaign.
This story is still developing. Flight counts differ by outlet and by day, and no one has claimed the threats or been charged.
Sources
- Reuters via Dawn, “Newsroom bomb threats follow escalating European flight hoaxes” (Nov. 6, 2026)
- Al Jazeera, “Hoax or bomb threats? What we know about flight disruptions across Europe” (Nov. 6, 2026)
- Al Jazeera, “New bomb threats force more European flights into emergency landings” (Nov. 5, 2026)
- Euronews, “Bomb threats continue to target aircrafts across Europe” (Nov. 6, 2026)
- Euronews, “‘Too early’ to say if Europe flight bomb threats linked, EU transport chief says” (Nov. 5, 2026)
- BBC via Yahoo News, “Hoax bomb threats target European airlines and airports for second time in a week” (Nov. 5, 2026)
- ABC News via Yahoo News, “Bomb threats targeting flights and media outlets continue across Europe” (Nov. 6, 2026)
- CNBC, “Hoax bomb threats repeatedly disrupt flights across Europe this week. Here’s what we know” (Nov. 5, 2026)