This video appeared in reports from Mexico in 2017 and does not show recent floods in India

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on November 26, 2021 at 08:04
  • 2 min read
  • By AFP India
A video has been viewed over a million times on Facebook with a claim that it shows floods at Chennai airport in India after heavy rains disrupted flight operations in November 2021. The claim is false; the video circulated in reports about floods at Mexico City's airport in August 2017.

"Chennai Airport", reads the caption to the video shared on Facebook on November 10.

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Screenshot of the false post. Taken November 23, 2021.

The video circulated online as Chennai -- capital of the  southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu -- was flooded by heavy rains, local media reported on November 9.

Strong winds also halted flight operations at the city's international airport.

An identical video was also shared with a similar claim on Facebook here, here and here.

However, a reverse image search on Yandex of the video's keyframes extracted by InVID-WeVerify, a digital verification tool, found the same video published here on the Twitter account of Mexican media organisation Reporte Indigo on August 30, 2017.

"Here is the AICM_MX this afternoon. The service has been suspended since 6.40 PM," reads the caption to the 2017 video.

"AICM" is an acronym for Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juarez Ciudad de Mexico -- the name of the airport that serves Mexico City.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (L) and 2017 video (R).

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The same video was also published by Newsweek Mexico on August 30, 2017.

According to this tweet from Mexico City airport's Twitter account in the early hours of August 31 in Hong Kong time, flights were suspended due to weather conditions.

Further analysis of the video found it contains features also seen in other footage of Mexico City's airport.

A structure painted green, white, and red at the video's 16-second mark corresponds to the structure seen at the three-minute-40 second mark of this footage showing a plane taking off at Mexico City's airport.

Below is a screenshot comparison showing the corresponding features.

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