Warsaw-Modlin airport reopens as hoax bomb threats hit flights across Europe

As of 8:28 a.m. ET, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026

Update (Nov. 4, 2026, 8:28 a.m. ET): This story has been updated with reports that nothing was found on the diverted plane, which was operated by LOT Polish Airlines, and that at least seven flights across Europe and a cruise ship in Greece received bomb threats Tuesday. No explosives were found. Earlier reporting from the Modlin airport follows.

Threats against flights across Europe

Several flights across Europe received hoax bomb threats Tuesday that prompted searches and diversions, and no one was injured, The Associated Press reported. The diverted plane at Modlin was a LOT Polish Airlines flight from London, and authorities found no explosives, the AP said. "The passengers were evacuated and the plane underwent security checks. Nothing was found," Modlin spokesman Adam Szablowski told Agence France-Presse, Euronews reported.

At least seven flights were searched, the BBC reported: two in Warsaw, including a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen that landed as planned at Warsaw Chopin; two Ryanair flights from Lisbon and Dublin in Rome, one of which was escorted by the Italian Air Force; a Ryanair flight from Manchester in Murcia, Spain; and two flights in Sofia, Bulgaria. No explosives were found on any of them, according to the BBC.

In Spain, the Civil Guard ruled out explosives on the Murcia plane, Francisco Lucas, the Spanish government's delegate in the region, said, according to the BBC. Bulgarian Transport Minister Georgi Peev said the two flights to Sofia, from Bergamo, Italy, and Dublin, were not diverted and no explosives were found, the BBC reported. A Bulgarian Interior Ministry spokesperson told AFP that the Bergamo flight was operated by Wizz Air, correcting earlier local media reports that the plane had come from Israel, according to the BBC.

The threats came a day after a Wizz Air flight from London Luton to Sofia made an emergency landing in Budapest after a bomb threat, the BBC and the AP reported. The UK government described Tuesday's incidents as "malicious hoax threats," according to the BBC. Officials have not said whether the threats are linked. While there was officially no link between the incidents, authorities from several countries would cooperate to assess whether they were coordinated, BBC transport correspondent Marc Ashdown wrote.

Cruise ship searched in Greece

In Greece, the Israel-bound cruise ship Crown Iris was searched at the port of Syros after an anonymous caller claimed an explosive device had been placed on its hull, the Greek newspaper Kathimerini and the public broadcaster ERT reported. A coast guard detection dog and a private diver found nothing suspicious in initial checks, and a specialist coast guard Underwater Missions Unit team later inspected the hull without finding an explosive device, the reports said. Passengers who had been taken off the ship reboarded, and it left Syros shortly after midnight for Haifa, Israel, ERT reported.

The Panama-flagged ship was carrying 940 passengers and 597 crew members, according to Kathimerini, whose English-language edition, eKathimerini, described it as Israeli-owned. Greek officials have not linked the threat to the flights.

Earlier at Modlin

Warsaw-Modlin airport, north of Poland's capital, said Tuesday that it had resumed flights after closing Tuesday morning over a bomb alert on a plane from London that made an unplanned landing there.

"We inform you that air operations at Warsaw/Modlin Airport have been resumed," the airport said in its third press statement of the morning, posted on its website. The airport had not said at the time whether anything suspicious was found on the plane.

What the airport said

A bomb-threat alert was declared at 9:54 a.m. local time (3:54 a.m. ET) for an aircraft flying from London Heathrow to Warsaw Chopin Airport, the capital's main airport, the Modlin airport said in its first statement. The plane, a Boeing 737 MAX, landed at Modlin at 10:01 a.m. with 181 people on board and was moved to a designated area to await the decisions of the relevant services, including bomb-disposal teams, the airport said. It said the airport would stay closed until further notice while services worked to verify the reported threat.

In a second statement at 10:45 a.m. (4:45 a.m. ET), the airport said passengers had begun leaving the aircraft and would wait in the arrivals hall. "At this moment we are not providing additional information about the course of the services' operations," it said.

Border Guard bomb-disposal officers were to check the aircraft and passengers' luggage, Maj. Dagmara Bielec, a spokeswoman for the Border Guard's Vistula regional unit, told the Polish news site Onet. "Only after they carry out a pyrotechnic inspection will we be able to say whether the plane is safe," she said. The quote is a GROKsiNEWS.com translation from Polish.

By 6:23 a.m. ET, Modlin's online flight board showed an arriving flight from Palma de Mallorca as landed.

What is not known

Officials have not said who made the threats, how they were delivered in each case, whether they are connected, or whether anyone has been detained. Bulgarian border police said the Sofia threats arrived by email, and the Crown Iris threat was made over the ship's radio, according to the BBC and ERT.