Old US flight evacuation video misrepresented as Iranian strike on Israel
- Published on March 3, 2026 at 10:19
- 2 min read
- By AFP Middle East & North Africa
- Translation and adaptation AFP Thailand
Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel and several Gulf countries after a joint US-Israeli attack killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in late February 2026. However, a video of passengers evacuating from a plane was not taken at an Israeli airport after an Iranian strike, as posts online claim -- it was filmed in July 2025 and shows an American Airlines jet that caught fire during takeoff in the US state of Colorado.
"Iran attack Israel airport with missiles, forcing passengers to evacuate," reads the Burmese-language caption of a Facebook reel shared March 2, 2026.
It shows passengers exiting a smoke-filled plane on an evacuation slide while an alarm blares in the background. The person filming the video asks a fellow passenger: "Are you OK?"
The video circulated elsewhere online in English, Arabic, Spanish, Indonesian, Malay and Hindi after the United States and Israel launched a wave of strikes against military targets in Iran on February 28, prompting swift retaliatory attacks across the region (archived link).
In addition to US military facilities, Tehran hit both Dubai International Airport -- the world's busiest for international traffic -- and Kuwait's main airport, causing the biggest disruption to global air transport since the Covid-19 pandemic (archived link).
In Israel, an Iranian missile attack killed at least nine people and injured dozens more in the central city of Beit Shemesh on March 1, after a death the previous day near Tel Aviv (archived link).
Hezbollah has said it also targeted three Israeli military bases in response to assaults on its strongholds, which Israel's military said it had launched after warning it would press ahead with its campaign against the Iran-backed militant group (archived link).
However, the video of passengers evacuating a burning plane widely shared on social media predates the latest war in the Middle East.
American Airlines plane fire
A reverse image search on Google using the keyframes from the falsely shared clip found a longer YouTube video published by The Wall Street Journal on July 27, 2025 (archived link).
The title reads: "Passengers Slide Onto Runway After Plane Catches Fire." The same scene of people exiting via the evacuation slides onto the tarmac appears at the beginning of the video.
The Wall Street Journal credited the video to Instagram user @highlymigratoryfishing. Further keyword searches on Instagram found the account, which shared a higher resolution video on the same day (archived link).
According to a statement on the US Federal Aviation Administration website, American Airlines Flight 3023 reported a possible landing gear incident during departure from Denver International Airport on July 26, 2025 (archived link).
Multiple news reports featuring interviews with the man who shot the original video, Mark Tsurkis, reported that all passengers and crew were safely evacuated (archived here and here).
AFP reached out to Tsurkis for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.
More of our reporting on misinformation related to the Middle East war can be found here.
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