'Weaponising disruption.' Travel expert Eoghan Corry comments on recent European hoax bomb threats
Video. "Nobody really has a chance of getting a bomb onboard... you've got to remember how safe European airspace is." Eoghan Corry, editor of Travel Extra, speaks to Euronews on the recent hoax bomb threats affecting multiple European airlines on Tuesday.
"Nobody really has a chance of getting a bomb onboard... you've got to remember how safe European airspace is."
Eoghan Corry, editor of Travel Extra, speaks to Euronews on the recent hoax bomb threats affecting multiple European airlines on Tuesday.
Corry talks about the varying different responses from each airport and airline to the bomb threats, using a "separate set of protocols," although they "aren't that scattered" in terms of procedures. However, he claims that these attacks were "designed to disrupt" rather than likely bomb threats, with more disruption occurring from the asymmetric reactions of different airports to the "blanket set of threats, weaponising disruption."
He comments on the overall security of European airspace: for 40 years, "nobody has got a bomb on board an aircraft", citing the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 as the last bombing in European civil aviation. Airports are "very, very, very good at security", but highlights the weakness of escalating the threat of a bomb, given the scattered and asymmetrical response of different airports in assessment and response.
On Tuesday, 27 European flights were targeted with bomb threats, all of which turned out to be hoaxes. EU Transport Commissioner said it was "too early to draw conclusions" on whether the cases were linked, and investigation is ongoing.
