An Austrian Airlines Airbus A320-200 flying from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport (TLV) to Vienna International Airport (VIE) was forced to divert to Vasil Levski Sofia Airport (SOF) in Bulgaria Sunday night due to a bomb threat. The Bulgarian Air Force dispatched MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets to escort the airliner to Sofia Airport.
On the ground in Bulgaria authorities carried out a search of the aircraft as well as its passengers and crew. No bomb was found. The flight was able to continue to Vienna as planned after a lengthy delay.
Austrian Airlines flight OS82 is a regularly scheduled service from Tel Aviv to Vienna. According to Flightradar24, it currently operates twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays. Sunday’s flight was a 13-year-old Airbus A320-200 bearing the registration OE-LZE. The flight took off late at 7:04 P.M. instead of the planned 6:40 P.M. take-off.
According to NBC, the flight was cruising towards Vienna near the Romanian border when its crew received an anonymous bomb threat concerning, as Ynet reported, a suspicious object on the plane. This prompted the crew to divert to nearby Sofia in neighboring Bulgaria with the country’s military dispatching MiG-29s to escort the jet. After the search Austrian Airlines reported: “During the search of the affected aircraft, the passengers and the crew, no danger was identified.”
The flight was relatively light with just 51 passengers and 6 crew members on board. It touched down in Sofia at 9:42 P.M. local time Sunday. It remained on the ground there for more than five hours while searches and security checks were carried out before eventually taking off again at 2:54 A.M. local time early Monday morning.
Its onward journey to Vienna took just over an hour touching down in Vienna at taking 3:12 A.M. local time. Its scheduled arrival time had been 9:25 P.M. Sunday night, a delay of almost six hours.
As previously noted, OE-LZE was the Airbus A320-200 that was operating Austrian Airlines flight OS82 on Sunday night when it had to divert to Sofia due to a bomb threat. According to ch-aviation, this 13-year-old narrow body twinjet is one of 29 craft of the A320-200 in the Austrian Airlines fleet, which also features seven newer A320neos. It re-entered service on Monday morning with a flight to Geneva (GVA).
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