These visuals are not related to the recent plane crash in China/Nepal - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 25, 2022
Update (19 January 2023):
Another post sharing the same video claimed that it shows Nepal airplane. The video is being shared in the context of recent Nepal plane crash near Pokhara airport. However, as explained below, the video shows Russian Aeroflot plane at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport that caught fire after a crash landing on 05 May 2019.
Videos of planes on fire and of massive fires are being shared through posts (here and here) claiming that those visuals are from the recent plane crash in China. A Boeing 737-800, which had 132 people on board, crashed in a mountainous area of southern China recently. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals of the recent China plane crash.
Fact: In the first video, the plane which is on fire is the Russian Aeroflot plane at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport that caught fire after a crash landing on 05 May 2019. The second video is of a fire that happened due to an ancestor worship in a village in China. Both the videos are not related to the recent China plane crash, where a Boeing 737-800, which had 132 people on board, crashed in a mountainous area of southern China. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Video 1:
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, a video with similar visuals was found on YouTube. The YouTube video uploaded on 06 May 2019 says the plane which is on fire is the Russian Aeroflot plane at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Since the video is old, it is not related to the recent China plane crash.
When we searched online with relevant keywords, it was found that the Russian authorities later released the footage of the plane crash. According to reports, the plane burst into flames after a crash landing on the runway, killing 41 people. The plane (Aeroflot Flight SU1492) was carrying 73 passengers and five crew members.
Similar videos (here and here) of a plane on fire, at different angles, were shared online with varying claims.
Video 2:
If one sees the video clearly, there is no plane in the video. There are only huge flames amidst trees.
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video with relevant keywords, a video with similar visuals was found on a Chinese website. According to the website, the visuals are from a fire that happened due to ancestor worship in a village in Fujian province in China. And these visuals which are being shared as though from a recent plane crash in China’s Guangxi region is not true.
AFP Fact Check had spoken to a government spokesperson in China, about the same video, who confirmed to them the video shows a hillside fire in a local village on 20 March 2022.
To sum it up, these visuals are not related to the recent plane crash in China.