An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner operating as Flight AI171 from Ahmedabad to London’s Gatwick Airport crashed shortly after takeoff yesterday. By Thursday evening, the death toll was at 294, including people on the ground.
A video was widely shared after the crash, stating it captured the last moment on the plane. During the investigation,n we found that the video is old and not related to the recent plane crash.
Claim:
X user Deepak Sharma posted the video with a false claim.
Other users also shared the same video on several social media platforms.
Investigation:
We uploaded the video to the InVid tool and ran a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from it.
This led us to a news report on dailyrecord.co.uk posted on 16 January 2023.
We found several other such news reports.
The reports stated: Sonu Jaiswal went live on Facebook with a group of friends to discuss their experience on the Yeti Airlines flight to Pokhara only minutes before it crashed and burst into flames, killing 68 people.
We found the video posted by Hindustan Times on its Facebook page on 16 January 2023.
The caption said: A video has surfaced on social media in which Sonu Jaiswal (passenger) is purportedly seen shooting a Facebook live onboard ATR 72. It was during the Facebook live the plane crashed. The family confirmed his death. Earlier it was reported that at least 68 people were killed in the crash but after a recount, the current death toll stands at 66.
Conclusion: The viral video claiming to show final moments before the Air India flight crashed, actually shows a Facebook live video taken by a passenger in a Nepal Yeti Airlines flight captures the moments right before the crash in mid-January 2023. The viral claim is false.
