Several flights to or from Italian airports were among those affected by a new wave of bomb alerts in many parts of Europe on Thursday, with Italian Air Force scrambling jets to escort a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome’s Fiumicino airport after an anonymous report that an explosive was on board.

An Air Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome with 151 people on board was rerouted to the Evreux airbase in northern France, escorted by French military jets, following a bomb threat.

“They told us that the plane had to land at a French airport due to technical problems and at one point we saw military jets pull alongside the plane, and that’s when we started to think that something wasn’t right,” Nicola Timpone, a Basilicata native and general director of the GAL agency who was on the Dublin-Rome flight, told ANSA.

“At that point, we realized there might be a bomb threat.

“Eventually, we landed and found ourselves at a military airport surrounded by firefighters, police, and many ambulances.

“They directed us to a secondary runway, had us stop there, and we’re still on the plane waiting to find out what’s going on”.

The Finnair flight landed in Rome as planned at around 9:30.

Sources said the subsequent checks on the plane were not having an impact on the Rome airport’s operations.
There were also bomb alerts for two flights that landed at Malpensa as scheduled, an Aegean Airlines service from Thessaloniki and a Ryanair flight from Porto.

Police ran checks on those aircraft after landing.

In all, 18 flights across Europe received bomb threats, and six in Italy.

About a dozen flights across Europe had previously been targeted by false bomb threats this week, including one from Lisbon to Rome, and Italian air force planes were scrambled.

Investigative sources said the bomb threats regarding Thursday’s Helsinki-Rome and Dublin-Rome flights came in an single anonymous email written in Italian to the ADR company that runs Fiumincino and other companies at the Rome airport.