The crash of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max-8 plane on Sunday morning has left the world mourning as 157 passengers and crew from over 30 nationalities died six minutes after the new aircraft flew from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi.
The digital flight data recorder for the Flight ET302 has been found during recovery efforts at the crash site in the town of Bishoftu, which is 60km (37 miles) south-east of the capital.
While investigations are underway, photos and videos purported to be from the Ethiopian Airlines crash have been widely shared by the public. The trending images and footages are fake and from past accidents and incidents.
Here are some of the fake images and videos which are trending on social media.
FAKE 1
This video is trending as the last moments of victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash. Face2Face Africa’s review of the video shows that this is a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane and per unconfirmed reports, the video was taken in an Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 502 on March 4, 2019, to Toronto via Dublin. The flight is reported to have lost cabin pressure and returned to Addis Ababa.
Other factors that show that the video is fake is that Sunday’s crash occurred in the morning while this incident happened at night. Also, oxygen is only deployed above 10,000-feet in an emergency and the plane that crashed didn’t get that high. Finally, the passengers in this video are eating their meals and it is a fact that meals are not served six minutes into a flight.
FAKE 2
This video shot from the pilot’s cabin showing a plane that’s crashing is not real. It is a flight simulator programme from Microsoft which is sold as a video game. If you have the Microsoft Flight Simulator, you can choose a flight and crash it if you are not good at the game.
FAKE 3
This is an Asiana Airlines Flight 214 which crashed after hitting a seawall while landing at San Francisco Airport on July 6, 2013, killing three people and leaving nearly 200 others injured.
FAKE 4
This is an Indonesian military C-130 Hercules plane which crushed into a residential area in the North Sumatra city of Medan, Indonesia, on June 30, 2015.
FAKE 5
This is an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-400 cargo plane that crashed on January 10, 2015, during landing at the Kotoka International Airport in Ghana. It had three crew members on-board.
FAKE 6
This image of Ethiopian Airlines crew members was shared as the crew members who died in the crash. However, this was picked up from the Ethiopian Airlines website where the photo was used for an ad.
Here are real images and videos from the Ethiopian Airlines crash as shared by Reuters and AFP.
