No, this video does not show an emergency landing by a PIA plane

This article is more than one year old.
Published on November 13, 2018 at 15:00
2 min read

A video that purports to show a Pakistan International Airlines plane with its engines on fire making an emergency landing at Istanbul airport has been viewed millions of times on social media. The footage was created using a flight simulation program. PIA has denied that any of its planes were involved in an emergency landing.

The video, which was posted on Facebook March 23, 2018, has 12 million views and more than 60,000 shares.

Screenshot of the misleading facebook post

An AFP video analysis found signs that the footage was not real video of an actual incident.

For example, in two of the video's keyframes taken 100th of a second apart, a trail of smoke turns instantly from black to white.

Screenshot of the footage at 1 minute and 1.11 seconds

Screenshot of the footage at 1 minute and 1.12 seconds

The video used in the misleading Facebook post was shared on YouTube on March 5 this year -- 18 days before it was posted onto the social media site.

In the video description, the YouTube channel clearly states that the footage is a simulation not a real life incident.

“Have fun watching some crash videos. All crashes are no real plane crashes, real one are terrible. This here is just for entertainment,” they wrote.

The channel, Runsame, said the footage was created using Microsoft's Flight Simulator X.

"[Above 'Flight Simulator X' Video] was created under Microsoft's 'Game Content Usage Rules' using assets from Flight Simulator X," they wrote.

"THIS IS A SIMULATION," Runsame said in a comment responding to YouTube users questioning whether the footage was of a real incident.

PIA said that the footage was “fake” and that no emergency landing had taken place involving any of their aircraft.

No emergency landing has taken place anywhere. The animated video of an old PIA plane (not in use) caught with fire circulating in media is fake. We strongly condemn this malicious and criminal act to defame the Pakistan International Airlines and Pakistan.
PIA Spokesperson.
— PIA (@Official_PIA) March 23, 2018

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