A video (here, here and here) is going viral on social media showing a woman in a long garment with a head-covering resembling a hijab at an airport undergoing immigration checks. The claim being shared along with the video describes it as a mysterious incident, suggesting that the woman arrived at JFK Airport in the US and, when questioned by officers about her destination, she mentioned a place called “Torenzo”, a country that does not exist. It also alleges that the immigration stamps on her passport belonged to non-existent countries, and the video concludes by portraying her as a “mystery woman” who might have come from another planet. Let’s find out the truth behind this viral video.
Claim: The viral video shows a woman in hijab at JFK Airport, mentioning a country called “Torenza” and carrying passports with stamps from non-existent countries, she is a “mystery woman” from another planet.
Fact: The video clip is a scene from Airline, an American reality TV series aired on A&E between 2004–2005, showing an elderly passenger traveling from Baltimore to Los Angeles. She is identified as an Arabic speaker, and there is no mention of “Torenza” or any non-existent countries. Hence the claim is FALSE.
To verify the truth behind this video, we performed a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the original footage published on the A&E YouTube channel on 08 November 2024, titled “Airline: Best Full Episodes of 2024 MARATHON | A&E.”
Further research revealed that the viral video is actually a scene from Airline, an American reality TV series that aired on A&E between 2004 and 2005, which followed Southwest Airlines staff in their daily interactions with passengers. The video, restricted to viewers in the United States, appears starting at the 22-minute timestamp of the first episode and shows an elderly, non-English-speaking woman who had travelled from Baltimore to Los Angeles, not JFK Airport in New York as claimed. In the footage, an airline employee notices that her passport is not in English and identifies her as an Arabic speaker, saying, “Saudi Arabia, they speak Arabic, right?” There is no mention of any place called “Torenza.” The staff then connect her with an Arabic-speaking employee, and eventually, her nephew arrives to pick her up.
An additional search for the country “Torenza” shows that it does not exist on any maps or in any official records. We also found no credible reports about any such incident as alleged in the viral post. This confirms that the “mystery” portrayed in the viral video is not real, and the footage is actually from a television series.
To sum up, the viral video claiming to show a “mystery woman” travelling to a non-existent country actually features visuals from a US television series.
