None of the reports depict this type of incident in Mexico. They correspond to other events that occurred in other countries in years prior to 2022.
“National mourning in Mexico. A terrible passenger plane crash has just occurred. There were no survivors,” warn several posts, including photographs of downed planes with plumes of smoke billowing from them. The posts, which have been shared more than 1,500 times on Facebook, include a link that supposedly shows a video of the incident in Mexico. However, the pieces are not related to any such incident in Mexico.
Photo was captured in Spain in 2015
Screenshot 1 was reported by Europa Press on September 7, 2018 , as confirmed by a Google image search. It is one of the “unpublished photographs” depicting moments of the crash of the Airbus A400M military aircraft in Seville, Spain, on May 9, 2015. The snapshot shows how the aircraft’s cockpit splits in two amid smoke and flames.
The agency also reported that this “unpublished” photographic archive was used “in the judicial investigation” to clarify the causes of the tragic incident, which resulted in the deaths of four people: pilot Jaime de Gandarillas, co-pilot Manuel Regueiro, and engineers Gabriel García Prieto and Jesualdo Martínez. It specified that they were taken by Manuel Vilela, a “photography enthusiast” who witnessed the event.
On the same day of the tragedy, El País reported that six people were aboard the plane, of whom only four died. In other words, the accident did not result in the deaths of all the crew members. The newspaper also indicated that the disaster occurred during a “test flight” and that the crashed plane “was part of a series that was to be delivered to Türkiye.”
Photo was captured in Somalia in 2013
Upon further investigation, Verificador found that this shot 2 shows a scene from a Reuters news agency photo archive depicting a plane crash at Mogadishu airport in Somalia on August 9, 2013. It reported that the image shows “an AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) firefighter trying to extinguish a fire at the crash site of a plane in Mogadishu.”
This snapshot event was also found in news reports by The Guardian and RFI, which reported on the disaster at the Somali airport that year.
Both media outlets agreed that this unfortunate incident resulted in four deaths and two survivors, who were hospitalized. They also agreed that the crash occurred at the time of landing. The second outlet stated that, according to the police version, the aircraft was coming from Ethiopia (a neighboring country of Somalia) and was “transporting military equipment for use by African Union troops.” Reuters, The Guardian, and RFI reported that this image was photographed by Tobin Jones.
Photo was captured in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008
Finally, this scene 3 is evident in a report by RTVE, published on April 15, 2008. “Several members of the rescue teams and onlookers inspect the wreckage of the plane that crashed in Goma . EFE/Alain Wandimoyi,” the caption reads. It stated that it was a Hewa Bora Boeing 727 carrying 85 people bound for the capital city of Kisangani. It also reported that, according to the Red Cross in Congo, it caused the deaths of around 70 people.
In this regard, on April 16 of that year, The Guardian reported that the aircraft “was attempting to take off from an airport in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, when it skidded off the runway” and hit the Birere market, where it “burst into flames.”
“The accident site was a scene of such devastation that it was difficult to determine whether the bodies pulled from the wreckage were passengers or bystanders,” he said. In his report, he noted that the death toll had fallen to 21, from the preliminary report of 60, and that the Red Cross reported 113 injured. He also reported that, according to the company, the official passenger list was 79 and that none had been reported as dead at that time.
In another previous verification, another shot by the aforementioned photographer of this accident in the Democratic Republic of Congo was also validated, which shows the same color and position of the crashed aircraft .
On the other hand, we found no journalistic or official reports of a recent plane crash with the characteristics described in the post. The Mexican outlet El Financiero reported incidents involving small planes in December 2022 in the states of Jalisco and Tamaulipas, which indicated only that there were injuries.
The viral posts include various links that supposedly contain footage of the incident. However, most offer no information and only direct to a web platform. One link, which has been widely used in the posts, does direct to a Telemundo YouTube archive. However, it contains a video of how a “mistake” nearly caused a crash between two planes in Mexico in May 2022.
While this content went viral in mid-December 2022, it has actually been circulating since 2021. That year, the fact-checking outlet Animal Político denied that several images, including the three pieces in question, show a plane crash in Mexico in which there were no survivors.
The content in question is a case of clickbait, which, as several fact-checkers have indicated, is a technique that, according to digital specialist Álvaro Vásquez at the Semrush software platform, uses “sensational headlines” to generate clicks on “internet content that aims to generate advertising revenue, especially at the expense of its quality or accuracy.”
