Following the Air India flight crash in Ahmedabad on 12 June 2025, a video (here, here, here, and here) showing a plane cabin filled with smoke while passengers panic is being widely shared on social media with the claim that it captures the final moments before the mishap. Let’s verify this claim in the article below.
Claim: Video shows the final moments of the Air India plane filled with smoke before it crashed in Ahmedabad on 12 June 2025.
Fact: The viral video is unrelated to the July 2025 Ahmedabad Air India crash. It actually shows an incident from 21 January 2020 on a Ryanair flight from Bucharest to London, where smoke filled the cabin due to de-icing fluid entering the aircraft’s air conditioning system. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
A reverse image search of the keyframes from the viral video led us to the same video available online since at least March 2023, linked to the Irish low-cost airline Ryanair. Some users also pointed out that the incident occurred in 2020.
Taking this lead, we searched further and found multiple (here, here, here & here) media reports about the incident. These reports include visuals and background audio that match the viral video. The incident reportedly took place on 21 January 2020 during a Ryanair flight from Bucharest, the capital of Romania, to London.
According to these reports, the flight was forced to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff when smoke filled the cabin. Passengers were evaluated by medics and were reportedly unharmed. Ryanair later said that the smoke was caused by de-icing fluid entering the aircraft’s air-conditioning system, where it was heated and turned into dense vapour. More visuals of this incident can be seen here. This evidence proves that the viral video predates the June 2025 Air India crash in Ahmedabad and is unrelated to it.
To sum it up, an old and unrelated video from a 2020 Ryanair flight in Romania is being falsely shared as footage from the final moments before the June 2025 Air India crash in Ahmedabad.
