00:00Well, Matthew Borey is the Chief Intelligence Officer at Osprey Flight Solutions.
00:05Matthew, welcome. Just how seriously should we take this apparent series of bomb threats targeting European airlines?
00:15The authorities are taking it very seriously in each of these cases where a potential threat to the aircraft has
00:21been made.
00:22The fighter jets have been scrambled to escort and visually identify the aircraft and guide it to landing safely at
00:31a divert location.
00:32The police and security forces on the ground are completing checks to make sure that there are no viable devices
00:39to be detected or any HOPES devices either.
00:42There's no indications that any actual devices have been found.
00:45But the number of threats made in such a short period of time across several different airports in Europe affecting
00:52a number of different airlines is cause for concern due to the potential that this could be coordinated.
00:57And with the fact that at least two of the threats have now been claimed by a Russian group in
01:04relation to at least two of the aircraft incidents in Italy.
01:08What procedures do airlines follow when the bomb threat is received and how do they assess whether it's credible?
01:17Well, they're immediately going to coordinate with security authorities in the country where the threat is made.
01:25So they're going to look at is this threat specific, i.e. is it towards a flight with a specific
01:30flight number?
01:31Is that flight in the air? What stage of flight is it?
01:34Is this also including threatening wording and is it also being made by a specific entity or group rather than
01:43just a potential lone individual?
01:45And are there any other indicators of other types of activity happening now that we've had several bomb threats made
01:52today?
01:52And then in previous days, the potential that there is a wider coordination means there's going to be a higher
01:58sensitivity by the authorities to take any of these potential threats seriously, meaning diverts, alert scrambles and security checks on
02:07the aircraft.
02:07Is there anything aviation authorities, airlines can do to prevent these threats or is this simply a vulnerability that airlines
02:15just have to live with and suck up?
02:19This is a vulnerability that airlines have had to deal with since passenger flight has taken place.
02:26Any individual with nefarious intent that wants to cause disruption can make a bomb threat, especially now in a digital
02:33age where access to a keyboard and Internet means that you can make threats behind a computer screen, for example.
02:41But in wake of the Russian hybrid warfare threats in Europe, in wake of the Iranian plot at Raff Fairford
02:50in the United Kingdom, there's broader geopolitical concern about these types of incidents being related to the potential intersection of
03:00conflicts and the European market.
03:05And so that's part of the thing that is being taken into account now is that this may not just
03:10be one individual making a bomb threat over personal grievance, et cetera, or a series of bomb threats, but it's
03:16something larger scale coordinated and potentially state linked.
03:19Matthew, thanks for that. Matthew Borey, the chief intelligence officer at Osprey Flight Solutions.
