Old, Unrelated Videos Falsely Linked To Air India Plane Crash in Ahmedabad
Both videos are old and have no connection to the tragic Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad.
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Social media users are sharing two videos, claiming to show some of the last moments recorded in Air India AI171 London-bound flight which crashed in Ahmedabad, Gujarat on 12 June.
The videos: The first clip shows distressed passengers and smoke or fog inside the aircraft's cabin.
The second one shows a pilot hugging a woman before making an announcement about his mother being a "special guest" on the flight.
(Archived versions of posts sharing these clips with the same claims can be seen here, here, and here.)
But...?: Neither are the clips recent, nor are they related to the Air India flight which crashed in Ahmedabad.
The first one dates back to 2020 and shows smoke inside a Ryanair flight travelling from Bucharest to London.
The second video shows a pilot making an announcement about flying his mother to another country on an Air Arabia flight in April 2025.
How did we find out the truth?: We carried out reverse image searches and keyword searches for both videos
VIDEO ONE: Smoke in Cabin
Conducting a reverse image search on one screenshot of the video led us to the same video on social media website 9gag, where it was shared on 25 April 2023.
The video was shared in 2023 and has no connection to the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad.
(Source: 9gag/Altered by The Quint)
A comment under this post noted that it showed visuals of a Ryanair flight and that the video dated back to 2020.
The commenter noted that the video showed a Ryanair flight.
(Source: 9gag/Screenshot)
Taking a cue from this, we used the term 'ryanair 2020 smoke in cabin' as keywords to look for more information.
This yielded several news reports dated 22-23 January 2020, such as this one by The Independent which said that a Ryanair flight from Bucharest to London filled with smoke shortly after taking off from Otopeni airport in Romania.
The incident happened in January 2020.
(Source: The Independent/Screenshot)
It added that minutes into the flight, a Boeing 737-800, the cabin started filling with "thick smoke," prompting the pilot to send Mayday calls before returning to Otopeni airport.
According to the airline, the cause for the sudden smoke may have been the "de-icing fluid entering the air conditioning system."
Ryanair and Air India: We looked for visuals showing the interior of any Ryanair Boeing 737-800 aircraft, and found a photo on stock image website Alamy.
On comparing the photo to the clip in the claim, we were able to confirm that the plane was indeed a Ryanair flight.
The interiors are that of a Ryanair flight.
(Source: X/Alamy/Altered by The Quint)
It is also important to note that the interior upholstery of Air India flights is typically red in colour, whereas the video in the claim shows yellow and blue interiors.
Additionally, the Air India plane that recently crashed in Ahmedabad was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which is a wide-body aircraft and has three more seats per row as compared to the 737.
The Air India flight which crashed in Ahmedabad was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which is wider than the Ryanair flight seen in the claim.
(Source: Getty Images/Screenshot)
VIDEO TWO: Pilot's Announcement
A reverse image search on this clip took us to an Instagram page, which had shared this video on 26 April 2025.
They had also tagged the pilot seen in the video, mentioning that he had made a "heartwarming announcement for his mother traveling with him."
This video was shared over a month before the crash.
(Source: Instagram/Altered by The Quint)
We checked the pilot's account, identified as one Aswath Pushpan, and saw that he, too, had shared the now-viral video on 15 March 2025.
Several media organisations, such as News18, NDTV, India Today and Economic Times had also shared articles regarding this video when it first when viral in April 2025.
Conclusion: Two old and unrelated videos have gone viral on social media where users have incorrectly linked it to the recent Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad.
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