Claim: A video shows an Indian aeroplane making an emergency landing at an airport in Pakistan.
Fact: The video was uploaded in September 2022 by YouTube channel BBB-Gaming, which flagged it as a “flight simulation” and “not real”.
On 5 January 2023, Facebook page ‘Mr Joy YT’ uploaded a video showing an aeroplane marked ‘Air Austriana’ landing at an airport but with one of its landing gears stuck, faltering and zigzagging midair before bouncing on the runway, hitting its engines on the ground, and skidding to a halt.
The video has gained over 102,000 views and more than 2,800 reactions as of writing time.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check used Google Lens to ascertain the source of the image and was led to the verified YouTube channel BBB-Gaming, which has over 1.24 million subscribers.
One of the videos uploaded to the channel is titled “Amazing Pilot Saved Passengers When Landing Gear Got Stuck | Xplane 11”.
The clip, which was uploaded on 15 September 2022 and has gained more than 19,300 views so far, has the following disclaimer in its description:
“Disclaimer:
This is only in the flight simulation. This situation is not real!
Everything in this video doesn’t happen in real life, because this situation is just a challenge for me to try in the flight simulation.
If you like the video, please comment-like-share-and subscribe.”
“Please understand that everything in my videos doesn’t happen in real life, because it’s just the game. I am just playing game or flight simulator and then record them to share with you guys for entertainment purposes,” BBB-Gaming says in the channel’s ‘About’ section.
Soch Fact Check also compared keyframes from the two videos, one of which is shared above.
Moreover, no airline with the name ‘Air Austriana’ exists at present; the only mention of it we found is here and here, both of which are in the German language, which, when translated into English, says, ‘Austrian Airlines’.
However, neither the name nor the logo on the aircraft’s tail matches those of Austrian Airlines.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the period from 1 January 2023 to 31 January using the search term “Indian Plane Emergency Landing in Pakistan Airports.”
The search turned up 145 Facebook posts with 11,368 interactions.
We found the same video on another YouTube channel but with a different title: “#Indian plane Emergency landing🥹#Air Austriana #airplane #american #airbus #canada#India#Delhi”.
Conclusion: A video uploaded in September 2022 by YouTube channel BBB-Gaming has wrongly been portrayed as an Indian plane making an emergency landing at an airport in Pakistan. In fact, the YouTube channel that originally posted the clip flagged it as a “flight simulation”.
Background image in cover photo: Jack Robinson