Oct 19 (Reuters) – A bomb threat forced an Austrian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv carrying 57 people to divert to the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, late on Sunday, though a search found no danger, the airline and Bulgaria’s BTA news agency said.
“We confirm that there was a threat against flight OS82 on October 18, 2026, from Tel Aviv to Vienna (TLV to VIE), which made it necessary for the flight to make an intermediate landing in Sofia (SOF),” the airline said in a statement on Monday.
“During the search of the affected aircraft, the passengers, and the crew, no danger was identified,” it said, adding that the flight continued from Sofia to Vienna with all passengers after reboarding.
Bulgaria’s BTA news agency said the Vienna-bound flight’s crew reported receiving a bomb threat when the aircraft was approaching the Romanian border, and the Bulgarian Air Force scrambled MiG-29 fighter jets.
The Lufthansa Group, which owns Austrian Airlines, Vienna Airport and the Austrian interior ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
The incident came less than three weeks after a co-pilot on an Israel-bound flydubai jet allegedly attacked the captain with an axe in an attempt to crash the plane.
The UAE attorney general said last week that an Omani flydubai co-pilot had intended to seize the September 30 Dubai-Tel Aviv flight and crash it into a terminal at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in a suicide attack, before he was thwarted by the captain.
(Reporting by Anusha Shah, Abu Sultan and Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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