Old video of Algerian plane malfunction falsely shared as 'moments before' Azerbaijan Airlines crash

After an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan in December, killing 38 people, a video appeared on social media in multiple languages ​​claiming to show the moments before the disaster. The clip, first aired in a news report from September 2024 about an Air Algerie plane malfunction, has also been falsely linked to the deadliest plane crash in South Korea on December 29 that killed 179 people. The plane seen in the video was able to return safely to Algiers International Airport.

“The last sounds were heard from flight J2-8243. Shocking news before the new year due to the accident of Azerbaijan Airlines in Kazakhstan,” read the Thai-language text dated December 28, 2024 on TikTok, where it has amassed millions of views. 1.5.

The video shows passengers chanting the Islamic prayer on the plane with oxygen masks on. A blue flight attendant is seen walking on the ground.

It then takes pictures of the death of the plane, the memorial and the people greeting them at the airport.

This post came after an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 crashed on Christmas Day in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board (link saved).

The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has demanded that Moscow admit that it accidentally shot down the plane when it was trying to land at the Grozny airport in Russia.

Russia has not confirmed that one of the anti-aircraft missiles hit the plane, although President Vladimir Putin told Aliyev in a phone call that plans were in place at the time and that he was sorry that the incident happened on Russian airspace.

A similar claim linking the video to the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines also appeared on other Facebook sites from Thailand, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

It also appeared in simplified Chinese communications documents falsely showing the final moments of the Jeju Air flight from Thailand that crashed in South Korea killing all but two of the 181 people on board (archived link).

The exact cause of the Boeing 737-800 crash is still unknown, but investigators have identified bird strike, faulty landing gear and runway obstruction as possible problems.

The video was released a few months before two deadly plane crashes, and reports of a technical malfunction that forced the Air Algerie plane to return to Algiers in September 2024.

An Air Algeria flight

A reverse image search on Google tracked down a video in a Facebook post by Info Trafic Algerie, an Algerian traffic information site, on September 23, 2024 (archived links here and here).

The post, written in Arabic, said the video shows Air Algerie flight AH 3018, which experienced a technical problem en route to the Turkish city of Istanbul.

“The captain of the flight decided to return to Houari Boumediene International Airport an hour after departure as a measure to ensure the safety and security of passengers and crew,” read part of the Arabic language post.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the fake post (left) and the video shared by Info Trafic Algerie (right):

A screenshot of the video was republished along with a report about the plane's return to Algiers by the local daily Al Shorouk News on September 24, 2024 (archived link).

Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera also published a similar video on its official YouTube channel on September 25, 2024, with chants of “Allahu Akbar (God is great)” heard at the 36 mark (archived link).

The description of the video said it shows the panicked moments of the passengers on the Algerian plane which encountered a technical problem, and was forced to make an emergency landing.

Some of the content of the viral video is true — a clip of the Azerbaijan Airlines crash was published by several news outlets, including Britain's Telegraph newspaper (archived link).

It also included a video of a memorial for the crash victims, and footage of a minute's silence for the dead at Baku airport — where the plane took off — published by AFP here (archived links here and here).