Ahmedabad Plane Crash: Old, Unrelated Video Falsely Shared As Footage From Inside Air India Flight 171

Claim

Video claiming to show the last moments of the passengers inside Air India Flight 171 before it crashed in a residential area shortly after take-off from the Ahmedabad airport on Thursday.

The archived version of the post can be seen here, which has clocked 608.6K views so far.

Fact

Newschecker ran a reverse image search of keyframes of the video, which led us to a clearer version of the video uploaded on X by a Turkish civil aviation platform, HavaSosyalMedia, dated March 18, 2023. According to the Turkish post, the incident took place on a Ryanair B737 aircraft, which made the passengers uneasy.

We also came across similar Facebook posts from April 26, 2023, sharing the 24-second video, seen here and here, stating that it is from a Flydubai plane. These videos confirm that the viral footage predates the Ahmedabad plane crash.

A relevant keyword search on Google led us to multiple image results of the inside of a Ryanair plane, including stock photos, which closely resemble the viral video, while a similar search for Flydubai provided contrasting results.

Screengrab of Google image results for Ryanair. 

Screengrab of Google image results for Flydubai.

Screengrab of the viral video.

We then came across this DailyMail post on Facebook, dated Mach 17, 2023, showing a similar video and headlined, “Ryanair plane fills with smoke after take-off”, saying that it happened after it took off from Bucharest airport. A further search led us to this X post, dated Mach 17, 2023, stating that it is from January 2020, while directing us to a report published by The Independent on January 23, 2020.

“Smoke began to flood the packed cabin just moments after the Boeing 737-800 took off from the Romanian capital of Bucharest, climbing thousands of feet into the air. A woman can be heard crying in panic in footage filmed on board the aircraft, while a man can be seen grappling with an overhead compartment in an apparent attempt to release an oxygen mask,” read The Independent report, adding that the flight to London Stansted was grounded just minutes into the journey after the pilot declared an emergency and returned to Otopeni airport. According to Ryanair, it was believed the smoke may have been caused by de-icing fluid entering the air conditioning system. Similar Metro and Sun reports, dated January 22, 2020, further confirms that the viral video is not from Air India flight 171.

Also Read: Ahmedabad Plane Crash: Viral Photo Misidentifies Pilot Of 2020 AI Express Accident In Kerala As Captain Sumeet Sabharwal

Source
Image analysis
HavaSosyalMedia post, X, March 18, 2023
The Independent report, January 20, 2020
Daily Mail report, March 17, 2023