Old Video Shared as Dirty Cabin of Air India with Haj Pilgrims

CLAIM

A 52-second long viral video on social media shows a dirty cabin of an aircraft which is alleged to be an Air India aircraft carrying Haj pilgrims. The claim along with the video reads: ‘Air India flight with hajis. We can only sympathise with the cabin crew.’

In the video, it can be seen that tissue papers are lying all over the cabin and people with skull caps are sitting in the aircraft.

Several social media users have shared the video on Facebook with a similar claim.

The Quint also received a query on the claim made about the video via its Whatsapp helpline.

TRUE OR FALSE?

The claim around the video is false. Neither is the video from an Air India flight, nor was it carrying Haj pilgrims. Rather, the video was reportedly shot in 2016 in a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight carrying deportees.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We did a frame-to-frame analysis using InVID, a video verification tool, and then reverse-searched each frame on Yandex. This led us to an article published by Daily Mail.

As per the Daily Mail article, the video was shot in Airbus A330 Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia). The plane was reportedly flying from Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. We searched for news reports about the same incident using keywords ‘saudia airlines plane dirty,’ which led us to an Arab News’ article published in 2016.

Arab News reported that a source in Saudia, on the condition of anonymity, told that most of the passengers aboard were deportees.

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Further, fact checking website AFP (Sri Lanka) had previously debunked the same video which was earlier shared with the claim that it is from a British Airways flight flying from London to Islamabad.

(The Quint has reached out to Saudia and the story will be updated once we receive the response.)

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