Video shows plane crashed in Connecticut, not New Jersey drone
- Published on December 20, 2024 at 22:30
- 4 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"DRONE DOWN??" says text over a video posted December 16, 2024 to Facebook, in which lights flare as emergency vehicles surround an aircraft crashed over the median of a freeway.
The caption adds: "Drone crashes!! #story #drone #newjersey #ufo #uap #storytime."
The clip ricocheted across Facebook and other platforms as reports and videos of unidentified aircraft flying in the northeast flooded social media, concerning local residents and prompting public responses from US government officials who said the drones pose no threat to national security or safety.
"Last night in New Jersey," another post on Threads says. "It's getting spooky out here. I saw one yesterday myself."
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a temporary ban prohibiting drone flights over parts of New Jersey, save for those authorized for national defense, law enforcement or disaster response.
But the posts claiming to show a drone crashed in the state are miscaptioned.
The aircraft in the clip is an airplane, not a drone -- and it crashed in Connecticut, near the state's border with New York.
AFP could not determine the source of the video circulating online. But reverse image searches surfaced similar footage and photos in reports from local news outlets about a small plane that crashed along Interstate 684 the night of December 12 (archived here, here, here, here and here).
A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating what happened, told AFP in a December 20 email that a Tecnam P-2008 aircraft crashed on that date in Greenwich, Connecticut.
"The preliminary information we have is that the plane was traveling from Linden, New Jersey when one of the pilots reported engine failure," the agency said. "The plane then crashed on I-684 while attempting to land at the Westchester County Airport."
The FAA also said in an online statement that the accident came "after the pilot reported engine issues" (archived here). The FAA referred AFP to its statement but did not provide additional information.
The passenger on the two-person flight died, according to the Connecticut State Police (archived here). The pilot was injured.
Authorities closed the highway to traffic, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the crash also caused an aviation gas spill (archived here, here and here).
The Connecticut State Police placed the accident site in Greenwich between Interstate 684's second and third exits.
Using that information and Google Maps Street View, AFP geolocated the footage to a stretch of the interstate in Greenwich (archived here). The video being misrepresented online appears to have been filmed from an overpass along New York State Route 120 (archived here).
Archived data from Flightradar24, a live flight tracker, confirms a privately owned Tecnam P-2008 aircraft with the crashed plane's tail number -- visible in footage and photos -- departed Linden on December 12. Westchester County Airport was its intended destination.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about reported drone sightings in New Jersey here.
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