Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
A Delhi-bound plane with 210 people crashed.
Fact
Viral video is fabricated by using an old image of an Aeromexico flight crash.
A video claiming that an aircraft bound for India’s capital Delhi with 210 people onboard crashed shortly after take-off is going viral on TikTok. The video went viral in the aftermath of the crash of Saurya Airlines plane in Kathmandu on July 24.
In this context, TikTok user @c.k…..123 posted a video carrying a screen-grab of a social media post on a page named Nepali Online News. The purported news post reads, “An aircraft that took off for Delhi with 210 people onboard has crashed.” The alleged news also carries an image of smoke billowing from an aircraft in flames and rescue workers rushing towards the plane. A melancholic tune of Nepali folk song is played in the background.
The video posted on July 25 has garnered 3307 likes, 110 users have shared it and 75 people have commented until the time of publishing this article. The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here. Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker first looked up the official website and social media page X (formerly Twitter) of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) to check if there was any crash of a Delhi-bound plane. We didn’t find any news or article about the crash of a Delhi-bound flight in Kathmandu.
We then checked the Facebook page named Nepali Online News media page and found that the page is known for posting unverified and sensational contents.
So, we took several key-frames from the viral video and ran reverse searches on them. A reverse search led us to an article, dated August 1, 2018, carrying a video whose thumbnail picture exactly matched the image carried in the viral video. We translated the article published on Euro News with the help of Google translate and found that the video showed footage captured by a passenger of an Aeromexico plane that crashed shortly after take-off in the Mexican state of Durango.
We also found an article, dated August 1, 2018, published in The Irish Sun, and found that some of the photos carried in the article matched the viral video.
Thus, we found that the viral video depicts the crash of an Aeromexico plane that happened in Durango State of Mexico in 2018.
Conclusion
There are no reports of a crash involving a Delhi-bound flight in Kathmandu. The image carried in the viral video is actually from 2018, and shows the crash of an Aeromexico plane.
Result: False
Sources
Euro News, August 1, 2018
The Sun, August 1, 2018
X (formerly twitter) of CAAN
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
