Fighter Jets Scramble to Intercept London-Bound Ryanair Flight After Mid-Air Security Threat

A Ryanair flight from the Bulgarian capital Sofia to London Stansted was intercepted by two fighter jets and ordered to avoid Czech airspace on Tuesday night after a security threat was received against the aircraft.

The incident involved a 14-year-old Boeing 737-800, which was operated by Ryanair’s Polish charter subsidiary Buzz but painted in Ryanair’s standard livery, which departed Sofia Airport at around 9:30 pm on Tuesday night.

The aircraft climbed to a cruising altitude of around 36,000 and started to head towards London Stansted, crossing into Serbian airspace just a short time after takeoff and then flying across Hungary and Austria.

The flight plan was then meant to see flight 9962 cross from Austrian airspace into Czechia long before this transition, Buzz received a security threat against the plane with as many as 189 passengers on board.

Czech authorities barred the pilots from flying into their airspace, forcing the pilots to make a sharp left hand turn to remain over Austria before crossing into Germany.

German officials didn’t order the plane to land, but did dispatch two Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets to intercept the plane as it flew over its airspace.

Thankfully, during this time, a security alert was deemed to be non-credible and the flight was allowed to continue onto Stansted, where it landed safely.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Ryanair told us: “Buzz, the Polish charter airline was advised of a possible security issue on a Buzz flight FR9962 from Sofia to London Stansted on Mon, 11 August.”

“This issue was quickly resolved and de-escalated, which allowed the flight continue on to London Stansted, where it landed on time, and passengers disembarked normally.”

In May 2021, a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, was ordered to land in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. The pilots had been informed that this was due to a bomb threat made against the plane, but it later turned out to be an elaborate ploy to get the aircraft to land in Belarus.

On board the aircraft was Raman Pratasevich, a Belarusian journalist and human rights activist, who was wanted in his home country for dubious charges of various terrorism offences.

Belarusian secret police had been trailing Pratasevich, and when they learned he was on the Ryanair flight, they orchestrated a plan with air traffic controllers to get the plane to land in Minsk.

The pilots initially rejected the request of Belarusian air traffic controllers to divert to Minsk Airport as their intended destination of Vilnius was an equal distance away, but air traffic controllers insisted, with the threat of despatching fighter jets to intercept the plane.

Ryanair’s famously outspoken chief exectuive Michael O’Leary was furious about the incident, describing it as a act of “aviation piracy” and a case of “case of “state-sponsored hijacking.“