This is a screenshot of an animation created using a flight simulator programme

This article is more than one year old.
Published on May 26, 2020 at 10:00
2 min read
By AFP Singapore

An image has been shared thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter alongside a claim it shows a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane moments before it crashed in the Pakistani city of Karachi in May 2020. The claim is false; the image is actually a screenshot from an animation that was created using a flight simulator programme.

The image was published on Facebook here on May 22, 2020. The post has been shared more than 4,200 times.

A screenshot of the misleading Facebook post taken on May 26, 2020

The text overlay on the image reads: “They were just sixty seconds from seeing their families on Eid. Prayers for the victims & their families”.

The post’s caption reads: “Prayers are with the victims and their family of Plane crashed in Pakistan ❤️”.

On May 22, 2020, a PIA plane crashed into a residential area in Karachi, killing 97 people on board. The accident happened just one day before Muslims celebrated Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Here is an AFP report on the crash.

The image has also been shared here, here, here, here and here on Facebook and here on Twitter, alongside a similar claim.

The claim is false.

A combined reverse image and keyword search found the image is in fact a screenshot taken from a video created with a flight simulator programme. The video was published on YouTube here on June 28, 2019, in a post titled “PIA 777-200 [Engine Fire] Crash Landing Lahore Pakistan”.

A screenshot of the simulation video published on the YouTube channel runsame in June 2019

The video description reads in part: “All my plane crash videos are just simulated crashes. Most of the shown crashes have no real background. Easy words: THEY ARE JUST FANTASY CRASHES !... All crashes created with: FSX & AFS2 & XPlane 11”

FSX, AFS2 and XPlane 11 are names of web-based flight simulator programmes.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading post (L) and the YouTube video (R):

Another video published on the same YouTube channel was also used in other misleading posts about the May 2020 plane crash in Karachi. AFP debunked the posts here.

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