A video of an aircraft crash landing at an airport, while going up in flames, is doing rounds on social media, with the claim that it is the Boeing 737-800 which crashed in a forested hillside in southern China on Monday, 21 March.
The Eastern Airlines aircraft, carrying 132 people on board crashed in Guangxi province. As of 24 March, no survivors had been found, reported Reuters.
However, the video is not that of the Chinese aircraft. It shows a Russian passenger plane, Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet 100, which caught fire while making an emergency landing on 5 May 2019 at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport.
CLAIM
Several social media users shared the video linking it to the recent plane crash in China.
An archived version of the post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
On carefully observing the video, we noticed that the plane on fire had the word 'Aeroflot' on its body, which is Russia's largest airline.
The word 'Aeroflot' was seen on the plane.
(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)
Taking a cue from this, we used keywords to look for reports of an Aeroflot plane on fire.
The results led us to a video uploaded by news organisation The Telegraph from April 2020, that discussed a Russian Aeroflot that caught fire and made an emergency landing at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport "last year."
We saw that this video resembled the one from the viral claim.
A firetruck is seen in the same position in both the clips.
(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)
Using relevant keywords, we looked for more reports of an Aeroflot plane crash at the Moscow airport from 2019, and came across a BBC News report dated 6 May 2019 that identified the plane as a Sukhoi Superjet-100, noting that the emergency landing claimed 41 lives.
It further noted that while survivors suggested that the aircraft was struck by lightning, the airline said that a technical malfunction caused the airplane to return shortly after taking off.
We also came across footage of the incident shared by the Russian Federation's Investigative Committee's (IC) verified YouTube channel.
Footage seen between the eight second and 1:36-minute mark in the video closely resembles the clip in the viral claim.
As per reports, pilot Denis Evdokimov said that he followed all procedures to make an emergency landing with excess weight, but the crew had reportedly not dumped any fuel, which is common procedure in such cases.
Clearly, a 2019 video of a plane making an emergency landing before going up in flames at an airport in Moscow, Russia is being falsely linked to the recent Boeing plane crash in China.
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