A photograph showing an aircraft lodged in an iceberg near a water body is being shared on social media, where users are claiming that it shows a discovery by one Dr Landon and his team.
What does the claim say?: It mentions that one Dr Landon’s team found a frozen aircraft during a “distant icy expedition.” The plane had supposedly mysteriously disappeared several years ago and had become a legend.
An archive of this claim can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
(Archived versions of more claims can be seen here, here and here.)
Is it true?: This story has no basis in fact.
There are no credible reports that corroborate any such incident or mention any Dr Landon finding a wrecked plane.
The image in the viral claim also appears to be a computer generated one.
How did we find out?: Using relevant keywords, we looked for news reports about a frozen, wrecked plane that any expeditioners may have found, as such an incident is bound to be widely covered by the media.
This led us to a video report by Inside Edition, which mentioned Dominik Nellen, a Swiss mountain guide, finding the wreckage of a 1968 plane crash in a melting glacier in the Swiss Alps.
None of the visuals or details matched the story in the viral claim.
Next, we ran a reverse image search on the photo, which led us to a blog post.
The post was shared on a website called smartworldmag, which carried the image from the viral claim and several other photos of planes and Arctic expeditions.
The blog post carried the same photo as the one seen in the viral claim.
(Source: smartworldmag/Screenshot)
However, it did not have any identifying details of the location, the wreckage, the team of explorers, or the timeline of events.
We found that the other photographs used to narrate this story, which takes the reader from finding the ship, exploring its interiors, into a cave, and then away, were all taken from stock image websites.
Click here to see the source of this stock image.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
This image, too, was taken from a stock image website and shows a plane in Iceland.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
This photo of a glacier in Argentina was also used in this made up story.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
None of the photos or incidents mentioned in the blog post could be corroborated by any other credible sources, apart from similar blog posts which carried the same information verbatim.
Conclusion: A fake story is being shared with a photo of an aircraft in an iceberg, with the false claim that it was recently discovered by one Dr Landon and his team.
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