Fact Check: Old, Edited Photograph Incorrectly Linked to Ahmedabad Plane Crash

Claim

A photo claiming to show the Air India plane with reportedly 242 people onboard before it crashed in Gujarat’s Meghani Nagar near Ahmedabad airport on Thursday (June 12).

The archived version of the post can be seen here.

Fact

Newschecker ran a reverse image search, which led us to a photo in an article published by InHabitat, dated December 14, 2011, stating that it showed a wind turbine in Scotland bursting into flames during a hurricane.

“Powerful winds have been howling through the UK for the past couple days, and one $3 million wind turbine was an unexpected casualty of the storm. A 328-foot tall turbine in Ardrossan, North Ayrshire, Scotland burst into flames after high winds caused the blades to start turning too fast. Most turbines are built with mechanisms that shut their generators off if winds become too strong but it looks like this Ardrossan turbine lost control and blew through any such safety precautions,” read the post. Similar articles from December 2011 on the Scottish turbine that exploded can be seen here and here.

A comparison of the viral visual (left) with the 2011 photo (right), especially that of the wind turbine, the flames and smoke, the surrounding greenery, along with the difference in clarity between the plane and the rest of the photo, suggests that it was edited.

A further search led us to several Youtube videos on aviation crashes, some dating back to at least eight years ago, using the viral image as their thumbnail. Interestingly, none of these videos featured such an incident as depicted in the viral photo, further confirming that it was edited.

We also ran the viral photo past the Fake Image Detector, which said it was computer-generated or modified.

Also Read: PM Modi-Led Govt Offering ₹5,000 Cash Rewards To Citizens? No, Viral Link Is A Scam

Source
InHabitat article, December 14, 2011
Image analysis
Fake Image Detector tool