A video simulation of the Air India Express Flight 1344 is doing the rounds on social media with captions suggesting it to be an actual footage of the airplane skidding off the runway at Calicut International Airport on August 7, 2020.
BOOM found that the original video had been uploaded on a YouTube channel MPC Flight Creations on August 8 - a day after the tragedy - with captions mentioning that video was a simulation 'with real data of Air India Express flight 1344'.
The Air India Express flight 1344, part of Vande Bharat Mission to repatriate Indians stranded abroad, was on its way to Kozhikode from Dubai on the night of Friday, August 7. According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the airplane with 191 people on board skid off the runway and fell 35 feet down a slope before breaking into two pieces.
In a statement, Air India Express confirmed the death of 18 people on board including both the pilots.
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The viral post shows an airplane and the events leading to its dramatic landing on the runway before the screen goes blank. All the details pertaining to the airplane and its landing on the night of August 7 keep appearing on the screen at regular intervals. Once the screen goes blank suggesting that the airplane has crashed, images of the tragic incident start appearing on the screen.
Towards the end of the five minute long video an Air India Express flight can be seen taking off with a message on the screen appealing to people to 'help the channel grow big by subscribing and sharing'.
The viral video is being shared with different sets of captions.
The viral post below has been shared with a caption 'Air india express crash landing at Calicut airport. CCJ'. Click here for the archive of the post.
Another post shared below has a caption '
Air india crash calicut international airport'. Check the archive of the post
here.
Another post (archive) viral with a caption 'Reality of Kerala Plane Crash' doesn't mention that the video is actually a simulation.
BOOM also received the video for verification on its helpline number.
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FACT CHECK
A reverse image search on some key frames of the video on Yandex led us to a YouTube channel MPC Flight Recreations which had the video uploaded on August 8, a day after the plane crash.
The video has been shared under the title 'Air India Express flight 1344 crash video - (P3D)'.
The caption with the video clearly mentions that the video is a flight simulation prepared by a flight simulation software Prepar3D.
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The caption with the YouTube video reads 'Music used: Flying high over the sky - MPC. This is a video simulation with real data of Air India Express flight 1344, a Boeing 737 registration VT-AXH from Dubai to Calicut Airport, on august 7, 2020. The plane overshot runway 10 and ended up at the bottom of a cliff'.
Prepar3D is a flight simulation software developed by Lockheed Martin, an aerospace and security technology development firm based in the USA.
However, the crash simulation clip seems to have some wrong information. The flight plummeted a gorge 35 feet below the hilltop airport, not 50 feet into a valley below the runway.
BOOM reached out to MPC Flight Recreations. They responded saying the video was theirs, and that they specialise in recreating real life aviation incidents and accidents. They affirmed that the video is a computeried simulation of AIE flight 1344 with public data available about it so far.