Bomb alarm at Charleroi Airport turns out to be a false report

Air traffic at Charleroi Airport in Belgium was temporarily stopped on Tuesday morning. The reason was a bomb threat on board a passenger machine, as a spokeswoman for the operating company announced. According to Belgian media reports, it was a machine from Porto with around 166 passengers on board.

The incident occurred around 11 a.m. when an aircraft received a bomb threat after landing at Charleroi Airport. « A security area around the aircraft was set up, which made it necessary to block the runway and thus the interruption of flight operations, » said the spokeswoman. The responsible authorities then took over the operations management, and air traffic could be resumed shortly before 2 p.m.

Finally, there was a surprising turn when details on the bomb threat became known: « The public prosecutor and the federal police have just been informed by Interpol that the report received was a false report. The author of the false alarm was identified and arrested in England, » said the Belgian judicial authorities in the early evening.