'Chaos within aviation industry' as European air traffic hit by bomb threats

There was further disruption to flights across Europe on Friday, with bomb scares forcing flights to divert, including a Prague-Rome Wizz Air flight, which made an emergency landing at Venice airport before being given the all-clear. Meanwhile, the Dutch military confirmed it had checked a KLM aircraft that landed. After a flight from Prague following a bomb threat, no explosives were discovered. And the offices of several media groups in Ireland, including the national broadcaster RTE, were evacuated following bomb threats on Friday morning. RTE said the threats claimed to be coming from the same group that targeted the flights. And for more on this, I'm joined now by Rochelle Ferguson-Villahi from our International Affairs desk. Rochelle, what more do we know about these bomb hoaxes at this point? Well, look, as we've been mentioning today, Oliver, we know that this has caused chaos within the aviation industry. Of course, there was that diversion of the Prague-Rome flight in Venice today, as you mentioned. But 21 flights in total were diverted on Thursday. So you can see a lot of passengers, air controllers, airport security really being thrown into question here. On Thursday, the Aer Lingus flight that was on its way to Rome from Dublin, that received a bomb threat as well. And then we saw that make an emergency landing in Normandy in the Evre airbase. Of course, 151 passengers got off there in safety, as well as the crew there. But it's worth saying that flights... Across Europe have been facing this challenge from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the UK, Italy. The bomb threats have been taken as credible enough to divert these flights. Now, of course, the slightest threat here needs to be taken seriously because there's no airline in the world that wants to take the risk of not taking it seriously. And then, you know, something very dangerous indeed happening. Intelligence services then, bomb officials finding nothing on any of those flights that were, you know, diverted. But as I said, what airports are wanting to do now is to, you know, rethink their airport security. How is it that this number of... ...bomb threat to being able to access, to gain access to, you know, which should be top security airports in Europe. They'd also want to be looking at threat assessments. How can they ensure that there is safety for passengers and that they don't fall victim to these kind of attacks again? And then finally, carrying out a number of investigations. Now, each country will be doing that separately. On the wider scale, when it comes to the EU, what they've done is they have activated their security information, what they call sharing mechanism. And the idea there was that... whether to see there is a link, whether this is coming from the same groups or not. But at the same time, there's a lot of caution here. Nobody wanting to, you know, accuse a particular group of doing so, when quite frankly, Oliver, the information that we have at this stage is just not clear enough. And it appears there could be quite a lot more than just simply these bomb hoaxes on the planes. Well, yeah, the flights, then kind of the tip of the iceberg, you might say. We've mentioned media, the national broadcaster RTÉ Ireland being hit as well. Let's not forget Bulgaria's Nova TV, the British broadcaster Sky as well. Now, they weren't forced to leave their offices, but they did face a bomb threat earlier on. RTÉ says, and you mentioned it, that this could be coming from the same group. They received an email today saying that a man called Mikhail Antropov was behind this and that he wanted to target European nations and cause chaos. Is that because there are two major European events coming up in Ireland this year as it carries out that six-month rotation as a member of the EU Council? That's a possibility, but of course it isn't the only country that's been hit. We are seeing cyber attacks. Europe. Let's not forget then, you know, this idea that the supermarket refrigeration systems, these freezers being hacked from a distance, also blood banks here in France. Now, we know the blood wasn't damaged because the temperatures didn't go low enough. But again, whoever is attacking these particular places are showing us that, you know, this is a first step. Perhaps Perhaps it can go further. EU authorities now wanting to... Check out, of course, who is behind this, but also prevent this from happening again. I think that's the priority for European nations at this stage. Thank you very much for that, Rochelle Ferguson. Jason Bouyahi.