Vienna: An Austrian Airlines flight travelling from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Vienna, the Austrian capital, made an emergency landing in Sofia, Bulgaria, following a bomb threat, the carrier said.
The threat was made against flight OS82, a spokesperson for Austrian Airlines said. The aircraft, an Airbus A320, landed safely.
There were 57 people on board, including 51 passengers and six crew members.
“During the flight, on the border with Romania, the crew reported a bomb threat signal and decided to land in Sofia extraordinarily,” the ministry said in a statement.
An Air Force fighter escorted the aircraft until it landed in Sofia, the ministry added. The passengers were subsequently deplaned.
Following the landing in the Bulgarian capital, the aircraft was being searched. Passengers were to be rebooked onto an alternative flight once the search was complete, according to Austrian Airlines.
The incident comes less than three weeks after a mid-air terror plot was successfully thwarted on a flydubai flight travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv on September 30.
Captain Smit Machchar, an Indian national, has received global praise for saving the flight despite being attacked with a crash axe by his Omani co-pilot, who was supposedly attempting to crash the aircraft.
Despite being severely wounded in the attack, Machchar managed to open the cockpit door and call for help, allowing passengers to subdue the attacker.
A reserve crew member who had been aboard landed the plane, which was carrying more than 170 people, at Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia.
The flydubai flight, FZ1073, plunged more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds while flying over the Islamic kingdom during its journey from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Israel, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.
According to the UAE’s attorney general, the co-pilot had planned to take control of the aircraft and crash it into the passenger terminal at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.
