Claim: Photos doing the rounds on social media depict 1500 private jets parked at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland in May 2022.
Fact: The photographs were not taken at the May 2022 WEF summit in Davos, Switzerland. In fact, these are old photos taken in May 2015 at the McCarren International Airport, Las Vegas and in January 2016 at the Swiss Airforce base in Duebendorf, respectively.
Fact or Fiction?
In May, photos with the claim that they depict “the parking lot at the Davos 2022 Climate Change conference” appeared here and here on Twitter. The tweets were posted on 23 May and 24 May, respectively.
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search and found the claim to be misleading. The photos were not taken at Davos, Switzerland in May 2022. In fact, one image was taken in Las Vegas in 2015 while the second image of a row of private jets was captured in Davos in 2019. Further, the name of the conference was also stated incorrectly: the name of the conference is the World Economic Forum not the Climate Change conference” as stated in the tweets.
The first photo appeared in a 4 May 2015 article published by The Daily Mail. The caption of the photo reads, “The private jet terminal at Las Vegas’ McCarren International Airport was packed Saturday night right before the highly anticipated boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao.”
The photograph was also featured in an article published by The Mirror. It was shared on Twitter in May 2015 as well.
The second photograph was taken by journalist Arnd Wiegmann for Reuters and featured in a 22 January 2019 article titled, “Record private jet flights into Davos as leaders arrive for climate talk,” published by The Guardian. The caption of the photo in question reads, “Passenger jets at the Swiss Airforce base in Dübendorf, Switzerland. Soch Fact Check found the original image on pictures.reuters.com using the search term, “Passenger jets at the Swiss Airforce base in Dübendorf, Switzerland REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann” and ascertained that it dates back to 12 January 2016. The Swiss Air Force base in Duebendorf, Switzerland is often used during the WEF in Davos for arrivals and departures of participants.
All the latest photos taken by Reuters of this year’s WEF meeting held between 22 to 26 May can be found here.
Virality
Isabella Maria DeLuca’s tweet received 492 Retweets and 57 Quote Tweets. Jim Lewis’ tweet gained 465 Tweets and 31 Quote Tweets.
On Facebook, the claim was shared here, here, here and here.
Conclusion: The images doing the rounds on social media do not show parked passenger jets at Davos in May 2022. In fact, the photos were taken in Las Vegas in 2015 and at the Swiss Airforce base in Duebendorf, Switzerland in 2019, respectively.