It’s been barely a few days since the Nairobi-bound Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed on Sunday, 10 March and old, unrelated footage are already doing rounds claiming to be footage of the crash.
CLAIM
The Quint could find at least four such videos and establish that none of them are related to the tragic incident that resulted in the death of 157 people.
VIDEO 1
The first video shows the front view of a seesawing aircraft, which then pans to the wing of the aircraft, where the logo of Ethiopian Airlines is seen.
It’s a Simulator Video
A reverse image search of keyframes from the video led us to a longer version of the video on Facebook uploaded by "Phillippines Report", which clearly mentions that the video is a "simulation crash" made with the x-plane 11 flight simulator software.
VIDEO 2
The second video shows the debris of a crashed flight burning, as bodies lay strewn about. The video also shows the wing of a plane, indicating that indeed is an aircraft crash.
Not Ethiopian But Colombian Aircraft
A reverse image search of this video proved that the accident happened in Colombia on 9 March. According to a local news report, all 12 persons aboard the DC-3 passenger aircraft were killed in the crash which occured in the country's Villavicencio municipality.
VIDEO 3
The third video shows flyers wearing oxygen masks inside a plane, where the Ethiopian Airlines logo is visible on the seat covers. The cabin crew can be seen helping the flyers while children can be heard wailing.
That’s Ethiopian Airlines; But an Old Video
In the first place, it seems seems unlikely that a video recording device or footage shot by it, would survive an accident that killed all the passengers on board.
The Quint could locate at least two articles – in Face2Face Africa and Daily Star –reporting that the footage belongs to a 4 March incident where the Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 502 from Addis Ababa to Toronto via Dublin lost cabin pressure and returned.
VIDEO 4
The fourth video shows a front-on view of a flight crashing in a field, next to a road.
Reverse image search of the frames of the video revealed that the footage is from 2013 and that of a Boeing 747 crash at Bagram Airfield military base in Afghanistan.
A CNN report on the crash uses the same video.
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