On Sunday evening, an Austrian Airlines commercial flight traveling from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport to Vienna was forced to make an emergency diversion to Bulgaria’s capital Sofia after a verified bomb threat was received against the aircraft, multiple authorities and aviation sources have confirmed.
The flight, identified as Austrian Airlines Flight 82 carrying a total of 57 people — 51 passengers and six crew members — was transiting through Romanian airspace when the threat was communicated, prompting the flight crew to immediately divert toward the nearest suitable major airport, Sofia’s Vasil Levski Airport. According to an official statement released by Bulgaria’s Ministry of Transport, local authorities activated full emergency response protocols immediately after receiving the diversion alert, including scrambling a MiG-29 fighter jet from the Bulgarian Air Force to escort the passenger airliner through the final approach and landing.
The jet, an Airbus A320, touched down safely at Vasil Levski Airport roughly three hours after departing Tel Aviv, and all passengers and crew were quickly evacuated from the aircraft as planned. No injuries or harm have been reported among anyone on board, and a full security sweep of the plane and all passenger luggage was completed within 30 minutes of the emergency landing. Investigations into the origin and credibility of the threat are already underway, led by Bulgarian law enforcement and aviation security authorities.
Austrian Airlines, a subsidiary of German aviation giant Lufthansa, confirmed the bomb threat in a brief statement to AFP, but declined to release additional details about the nature of the threat or the investigation as of press time. The BBC has reached out to Lufthansa for further comment on the incident, and no additional statement has been issued to date.
This latest aviation security incident comes amid a string of recent safety scares across European and Middle Eastern airspace. Just one month prior, a Flydubai flight en route to Tel Aviv was the target of a hijacking attempt, when a passenger claiming to be a pilot attacked the aircraft’s captain mid-flight. The attempt was foiled when other crew members and passengers restrained the attacker, and the flight diverted to Saudi Arabia for a safe landing with no casualties. Last week, another false alarm triggered military responses in two European countries: Croatia and Germany both scrambled fighter jets after a commercial flight traveling from the Greek holiday island of Corfu to Nuremberg, Germany accidentally transmitted an erroneous hijacking alert, with no actual threat present on board.