181 aboard as bomb threat diverts London flightWorld

There were 181 people on board the LOT Polish Airlines flight, and they were evacuated after landing. The airport said the aircraft was still carrying around 3.7 tonnes of fuel when it touched down, and bomb disposal experts were called in to inspect the plane and passengers’ luggage. A LOT spokesperson confirmed it was a LOT flight.

Modlin airport, about 36 kilometres from the Polish capital and mostly used by budget airlines, was closed until further notice while the checks continued. Airport spokesman Adam Szablowski told reporters that staff were waiting for bomb disposal experts to arrive before the aircraft could be cleared.

At Warsaw Chopin airport, within the city limits, a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen was also being checked after a bomb threat report. The SAS flight, carrying around 60 passengers, landed at Chopin and was searched, while the airport continued operations. Authorities had not said whether either threat was genuine, or whether the two threats were linked.

The incidents marked the third bomb threat on an aircraft heading to eastern Europe in less than 24 hours, according to reports, adding to a tense few days for European aviation security. Passengers on both Warsaw-bound flights were evacuated safely, and no explosives had been reported found at the time of reporting.

Bomb threats against aircraft are treated as serious security events even when they turn out to be hoaxes, because airlines and airports cannot take the risk of ignoring them. The standard response is to divert or hold the aircraft, move passengers away, and let specialist teams search the plane and baggage before anyone is allowed to continue their journey.

For the travellers involved, the disruption meant missed connections and long waits at two different Warsaw airports. For the authorities, the morning’s events were a reminder of how quickly a single alert can shut down an airport and ripple through the day’s flight schedules across Europe.