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An Austrian Airlines passenger flight travelling from Tel Aviv to Vienna was forced to divert to Sofia late on Sunday following a bomb threat.
Security checks located no hazardous materials, allowing the aircraft to resume its journey, the carrier and Bulgarian news agency BTA confirmed.
BTA reported that the crew issued an alert as the aircraft approached the border with Romania, prompting the Bulgarian Air Force to scramble MiG-29 fighter jets. Israeli outlet Haaretz noted the warning was “called in by an Austrian national who was not on board”, though it did not disclose its source.
“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.
The carrier added: “During the search of the affected aircraft, the passengers, and the crew, no danger was identified,” noting that the plane subsequently flew onwards to Vienna with all passengers on board.
The flight was carrying 51 passengers and six crew members. According to flight-tracking website Flightradar24, the aircraft was an Airbus A320-200, which has a capacity of up to 180 seats.
Vienna Airport, the Austrian interior ministry and the Lufthansa Group, which owns Austrian Airlines, did not respond to requests for comment. The Austrian and Bulgarian interior ministers were due to hold a previously scheduled press conference in Vienna later on Monday at 11 a.m. (0900 GMT).
The incident took place 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 United Arab Emirates’ attorney general said last week 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.
The captain has since described blocking axe blows to the head and screaming for help as he reached for a knob to open the cockpit door.
Captain Smit Machchhar has been hailed as a hero for his role in averting disaster on the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, helping to thwart what the UAE attorney general has said was an attempted suicide attack by the co-pilot who intended to crash the plane into Ben Gurion Airport.
Speaking in an interview with The National newspaper from a hospital bed in Abu Dhabi, his head and left arm bandaged, Machchhar said that when the first blow landed, he thought something had gone “horribly wrong the aircraft structure”, before quickly realising he was being attacked and things had “taken a drastic turn”.
“The next thought was I need to get help in here,” he said in the interview published on Saturday.
“My immediate action was to free myself from the seat belts and I tried to just block the blows as much as I could,” he said, pointing to his arm that was wounded as he defended himself. “The blows were coming on the head.”
“Immediately, my hand went to the knob which opens the door and screaming for my colleagues, screaming his name.”
“I believe that was the first time when I lost my consciousness.”
The incident caused the airliner to plunge 16,000 feet (4,900 meters) in 30 seconds before the attacker was overwhelmed and two other pilots who were on board landed the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia. The suspect, an Omani national, was transferred to the UAE, flydubai’s home country.
Machchhar said he heard the cockpit door opening and screaming “between my colleague and the guy”.
He said the scariest thing he felt was the aircraft nose “steeply going down.”
Additional reporting by Reuters.
