Fact Check: Ahmedabad plane crash - final moments show panic among passengers? No, video is old
A video showing a plane experiencing air turbulence and the passengers panicking while holding onto the seats is going viral on social media regarding the Ahmedabad plane crash.
By K Sherly Sharon
Claim:The video shows the passengers on the Air India plane holding onto their seats in panic before the plane crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12.
Fact:The claim is false. The video is old and has been circulating online since at least May 2022. The video is not related to the Ahmedabad plane crash.
Hyderabad: A video of a plane experiencing turbulence while passengers hold on to their seats in panic is going viral on social media.
On June 12, moments after take-off, Air India flight AI-171 with over 242 passengers onboard crashed near Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, on the BJ Medical College UG hostel mess in Ahmedabad.
In this context, the viral video is being shared with the claim that it shows the state of the passengers right before the plane crashed. The video was shared on Instagram. The text on the video reads, “See what the state of passengers was, right before the plane crashed.” (Translated from Hindi) (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video is unrelated to the Ahmedabad plane crash and has been circulating online since May 2022.
Using reverse image search, we have found the uncropped version of the viral video shared by an Instagram user ‘skyward_legends’ on September 28, 2024. The post caption reads, “Footage from inside an Airplane as It Goes through Air Turbulences”.
The same video was shared on the social media platform, TikTok (video accessible through a VPN), on May 1, 2022, with the caption, “It was the scariest plane I’ve ever flown in.” (Archive)
A screenshot from the video was shared in a report published by Daily Mail on March 18, 2023. The report was titled, “SHAKES on a plane! Passengers share videos of their most TERRIFYING turbulence experiences…”. (Archive)
A comparison between the screenshot from the Daily Mail report and the uncropped version on Instagram is given below.
Daily Mail captioned the image, “This clip shared by @skytleea shows people holding on to the seats in front of them as they experience severe turbulence”. The word ‘@skytleea’ was hyperlinked to a TikTok post that is now deleted.
We found an Internet archive of the TikTok post on the Wayback Machine. The archive does not show the video. However, the date of upload of the video and the caption on the post are displayed.
According to the archive, the video was uploaded to TikTok on December 28, 2022, with the caption, “Footage from inside an Airplane as it goes through Air Turbulences#skytleea #pilot.”
Additionally, when we analysed the Instagram video uploaded by ‘skyward_legends’ closely, we found that the air plane in the video is Airbus A321. Upon zooming into the video frame we can see the words 'Airbus A321' written on the card placed on the back of the seat. Identical cards have been placed on other seats as well. Hence we can infer that the plane in this video must be the Airbus A321.
We were unable to independently verify the incident from the video. However, the video has been circulating online at least since May 2022.
CNBC reported that the plane that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12 is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. The plane was operating as Air India Flight AI 171 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick. It was not the Airbus A321.
Therefore, NewsMeter concluded that the viral claim is false. The video is not related to the Ahmedabad plane crash. It has been in circulation online at least since May 2022.
