Bomb Threat Forces Flight from Tel Aviv to Divert to Bulgaria
An Austrian Airlines flight made an emergency landing in Sofia after a bomb threat, while other security incidents occurred in Germany and Bulgaria.
Translated by Qiyas from الجريدة — Original source
A bomb threat on a flight operated by Austrian Airlines from Tel Aviv to Vienna on Sunday forced the plane to divert to Bulgaria, according to Bulgarian authorities and the airline.
The Bulgarian Ministry of Transport said in a statement that the Austrian Airlines crew decided to make an emergency landing in Sofia after receiving a bomb threat as the aircraft approached Romania, adding that passengers were evacuated from the plane after it landed.
The airline told Agence France-Presse that there were 51 passengers and six crew members on board, and that a security inspection of the Airbus A320 aircraft was carried out after it landed safely in Sofia, about half an hour after the threat was received.
According to data from the flight-tracking website Flightradar24, the plane entered Romanian airspace around 9:10 p.m. before heading south back toward Bulgaria, where it landed in Sofia.
Data from another flight-tracking platform, ADS-B Exchange, indicated that the aircraft was broadcasting the transponder code “7700,” which signals a general emergency, at roughly the same time.
The Ministry of Transport said a crisis response team had been formed and that relevant authorities had launched an investigation into the incident.
In a separate incident late last month, a first officer on a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv attacked the captain, allegedly planning to deliberately crash the plane, but the captain, passengers, and crew managed to subdue him.
Last week, Croatia and Germany scrambled fighter jets after a commercial flight from the Greek island of Corfu to the German city of Nuremberg mistakenly sent a hijacking alert.
