Fake News: Video Showing Airliner Flipping Over Before Landing In Typhoon Is NOT Real!

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Video Showing Airliner Flipping Over Before Landing In Typhoon Is NOT Real!

Is this video of an airliner flipping over or doing a 360 degree roll because of a typhoon during the landing real? No, it is not: the video is a composition of two different videos and the first part is fake. The video went viral in part through an article on CelebMagazine from September 14, 2018 titled "WATCH: Pilot amazingly saves his passengers' lives during a typhoon" which showed several screenshots from the video and which had following short description:

We all know that being a pilot is never easy. This job requires you to have a great source of knowledge and a handful of courage and braveness. Because of the privilege of traveling from one country to another, many people aspire to be one, but the standards of this profession are definitely challenging. These pilots are also responsible for their passengers, who entrusted them with their lives. Fighting against typhoons is also one of the most challenging conflicts of this occupation.

However the story totally failed to mention when and where this incident supposedly happened. It did contain this Facebook video as a 'source':

We made a backup of the video here.

The video got over four million views when it was posted to Facebook (post archived here).

However the first part of the video is clearly a crop from this video which has been online since at least June 2017:

And the second part seems to be taken from footage of an emergency landing that happened in August 2018:

Macau-bound plane makes emergency landing in Shenzhen | Macau News

A Macau-bound Capital Airlines jet was forced to make an emergency landing in Shenzhen yesterday, Xinhua reported. According to Xinhua and other media reports, two wheels were missing after the emergency landing. Shenzhen lies some 60 kilometres north-east of Macau. Shenzhen airport reportedly closed one of its two runways for about three hours to handle the emergency landing.

That explains why the plane in the first part of the video has the logo of the Canadian airline "Jetz" on the fuselage while the airplane on the ground has Capital Airlines livery.

Several elements in the first part of the video also don't add up: there is supposedly a very bad storm blowing but birds can be seen flying by normally. And those type of maneuvers are normally impossible with a jet airliner without seriously damaging the plane. Several people also noticed the control surfaces on the wings and tail don't seem to move at all despite the pilot supposedly making all kinds of heroic efforts to right the plane.

Our conclusion: this video is fake.


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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