Yesterday, at least fourteen French airports were temporarily evacuated followingbomb threats or because of abandoned packages, causingsignificant disruptions to air traffic.
The fourteen affected airports are Lille, Lyon-Bron, Nantes, Nice, Toulouse, Beauvais-Tillé, Bordeaux, Pau, Biarritz, Strasbourg, Rennes, Carcassonne, Brest and Tarbes. On the other hand, the two Paris airports, Orly and Charles-de-Gaulleare not concerned.
Evacuations of varying degrees of scale disrupted these provincial airports during the day, their air traffic having been completely or partially interrupted, time to evacuate users and staff, and to allow the police to check the threat. Their activity generally resumed after the intervention of demining teams.
The airports of Lille, Lyon-Bron, Nantes, Toulouse and Beauvais-Tillé received threats by email, according to a police source. Bordeaux, Pau, Biarritz, Strasbourg, Rennes, Carcassonne and Tarbes were subject to preventive evacuation and clearance procedures, following a bomb threat also received by email.
Brest was evacuated due to the presence of a suspicious package, ultimately harmless. In Nice, there “was just one suspicious package alert, something frequent, which required the establishment of a security perimeter,” according to a press release from the airport.
The disruptions were more or less marked. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) reported significant delays, notably in Lille, Beauvais and Bordeaux, which were finally resolved during the day. Toulouse airport still had most of the delays around 6 p.m.: forty minutes on arrival, more than three hours on takeoff.
