A video showing the inside of a turbulent aircraft has gone viral on the internet, where it is being shared with the claim that it shows visuals of the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft which crashed in Kazakhstan on 25 December 2024.
How did we find out the truth?: We ran a reverse image search on the video using Google Lens, which led us to several social media posts carrying this video, dating back to September 2024.
The caption of one such post mentioned that it showed visuals on an Air Algeria’s flight AH3018, which had to return to the Houari Boumediene International Airport, also known as the Algiers International Airport, after it experienced a technical malfunction while en route to Istanbul.
More posts sharing this video in September 2024 can be seen here and here.
Taking a cue from this, we used ‘Flight AH3018 September 2024’ as keywords in Arabic (رحلة ah3018 سبتمبر 2024) to look for more details about this incident.
This led us to a report by Algerian news agency Algeria Press Service, carrying a statement by the airline which acknowledged the incident and said that the craft had to return an hour after it took off.
Those affected by the incident were provided accommodation and an alternate flight the following evening, it added.
Al Jazeera’s report, too, carried the same statement.
We also found a report of this flight on Flight Safety Foundation’s website, which mentioned that the aircraft had returned after suffering loss of cabin pressure.
More on the Kazakhstan crash: An Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft flying from it’s capital, Baku, to the Russian town of Grozny on 25 December, when it was unintentionally shot down by the latter’s air defence systems while fending off a Ukrainian drone strike, Associated Press reported President Ilham Aliyev as saying.
Grozny experienced heavy fog and its airspace was closed for safety, it added, mentioning that the aircraft’s pilot had tried to land twice, unsuccessfully, before being diverted to Kazakhstan’s Akhtau, when it was allegedly shot down. Of the 67 people on board, only 29 survived.
Conclusion: An old video has gone viral with the false claim that it shows visuals of the recent plane crash in Kazakhstan.
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