On May 21, 2024, many media outlets and Telegram channels illustrated the news about a Singapore Airlines flight that encountered severe turbulence with videos allegedly filmed in the cabin of the airliner. We have verified the accuracy of these records.

May 21 at 13:00 Moscow time Singapore Airlines reported about an unscheduled landing in Bangkok of a plane flying from London to Singapore. According to the carrier, the plane hit an area of severe turbulence, one person died (as writes BBC, we are talking about a 73-year-old British citizen). In total there were 211 passengers and 18 crew members on board; four hours after landing in Bangkok the company reported about 30 victims who were hospitalized.

To illustrate this news, some media outlets used videos allegedly filmed in the cabin of a Boeing bound for Singapore. The first video lasts 18 seconds, it was filmed by a passenger sitting by the window, and in the frame - mainly his neighbors in the row. The second recording, lasting 36 seconds, captures much more of the interior.

Either one or both videos were published on their social networks or on their websites, for example, Russian RTVI, "Komsomolskaya Pravda", RT, "Notebook" And "New news", as well as Ukrainian UNIAN And "Channel 24" Among the Telegram channels that distributed the video are “Operation Z: military correspondents of the Russian spring"(358,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Shot (285,000), "Media Russia is not Moscow"(131,000), "Evil proof"(104,000), Kosti (99,000), Voblya (97,000), "Militarist" (67,000) and "Mislivets Egor"(62,000).

Source: Telegram

The first thing that catches your eye is the discrepancy between the two videos. In one, the salon is illuminated with natural light through portholes, in the other, artificial lighting is turned on. There are no screens on the backs of the seats in the first video, but there are some on some of the seats in the second.

Using a reverse still image search, Verified found that the 17-second video, at the end of which a woman clasps her hands in prayer, was filmed back in June 2019. Then, five years ago, an ALK airliner, heading from Pristina to Basel, got into the turbulence zone. The plane landed at its destination, where ten people on board were hospitalized. One of them was the husband of the author of the video, Mirieta Bashi. She published the full 40-second version of the video on the Storyful platform; on the same day, fragments of the recording were used by many major media outlets, such as TV channels ABC And Sky News.

The second video, which went viral against the backdrop of the plane's emergency landing in Bangkok, depicts the events of August 2023. Using the same method as in the previous case, we found a fragment of this video on website German television channel n-tv - the caption indicates that the plane was heading from Alicante to Mallorca. It is clarified that the plane was caught in a storm that then hit the Balearic Islands. How indicates Newsweek, the original video was posted on her Instagram page by a passenger named Estela Orts Martinez, and the plane was forced to return to its departure point after encountering turbulence.

You can visually assess what actually happened on board the Singapore Airlines airliner by pictures in the Reuters photo bank. Kettles, trays, bottles and food were scattered on the floor of the plane, part of the cabin trim was torn off, and the seats were damaged.

It should be noted that some large media outlets and Telegram channels that used old videos in news about the events of May 2024 either deleted them or added clarifications to the news text stating that the videos were not related to the events around the plane that landed in Bangkok. This was done, in particular, Mash, Readovka, TV channelStar" And Astra.

Cover photo: Gab01/Wikimedia Commons