An airliner heading from Dublin to Rome was on Thursday rerouted to France, where it was escorted by military aircraft after a suspected bomb threat, French authorities said.
The situation is being monitored, a statement from French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s office said.
France’s air force said it had dispatched planes “as soon as the threat was reported”.
“The aircraft has landed safely at Évreux. The 151 passengers and 6 crew members have been brought to safety, and bomb disposal teams are on-site,” Lecornu said.
Flight tracking websites say the diverted aircraft belongs to Ireland’s flag carrier, Aer Lingus.
Italian media said that bomb alerts were reported on two flights to Rome and from Milan. A flight from Helsinki headed for the Italian capital landed safely escorted by Italian jets, Euronews reported.
The Flightradar24 tracking site says no flights have taken off from Rome Fiumicino Airport, adding that the reason for the “disruption is currently unknown.”
A spokesperson for Finland’s flag carrier Finnair said a bomb threat was also made against a flight from Helsinki to Vienna operated by Jettime but that the aircraft landed in the Austrian capital without incident.
At least 12 European flights were targeted by bomb threats on Thursday, with several planes receiving fighter jet escort and at least two flights diverted, authorities and airlines said.
It was the third day of mass bomb alerts this week and particularly targeted low-cost carriers on European flights.
Meanwhile, authorities in Bulgaria said that bomb threats had been made against three Ryanair flights headed to the capital Sofia on Thursday.
Two of the planes, which took off from Copenhagen and Madrid, reached Sofia while a third aircraft from London was diverted to Plovdiv, the transport ministry said.
The incident came after some 10 European flights were targeted by bomb threats on Tuesday, forcing the brief closure of a Warsaw airport and the scrambling of air force planes in Rome, according to authorities.
The UK government called those incidents “malicious hoax threats”.
