Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show Boeing Singapore Airlines Turbulence Incident In May 2024

Fact Check

  • by: Ed Payne
Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show Boeing Singapore Airlines Turbulence Incident In May 2024 2019 Video

Does a social media video show an incident on May 21, 2024, in which a Boeing Singapore Airlines plane hit extremely rough air? No, that's not true: The clip is from nearly five years earlier. Instead of the Singapore Airlines flight, the video shows another case of heavy turbulence from June 2019, involving an ALK Airlines plane over Europe.

The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) published on X, formerly Twitter, by Tommy Robinson on May 21, 2024. The post's caption said:

Boeing again.

One person is dead and others are injured after a Singapore Airlines flight from London struck 'severe turbulence' and was forced to make an emergency landing in Bangkok.

This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:

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(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue May 21 16:50:08 2024 UTC)

The post

The social media post above is supposed to show what happened on a Singapore Airlines flight when it hit severe turbulence over the Indian Ocean on May 21, 2024. The incident left a man dead and more than two dozen other passengers injured, The Associated Press reported.

Through a reverse image search with Google Lens, Lead Stories found that the video is actually from nearly five years earlier. It involved another flight in which an ALK Airlines plane hit extremely rough air between Pristina, Kosovo, and Basel, Switzerland, on June 16, 2019, ABC News reported. The turbulence injured 10 people.

Original video

A social media post (archived here) published on X by Sky News on June 17, 2019, shows the exact same scene as the video being passed off as the Singapore Airlines flight from 2024. You can watch it below:

Read more

At the time this was written, Newsweek had reviewed the same claim.

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  Ed Payne

Ed Payne is a staff writer at Lead Stories. He is an Emmy Award-winning journalist as part of CNN’s coverage of 9/11. Ed worked at CNN for nearly 24 years with the CNN Radio Network and CNN Digital. Most recently, he was a Digital Senior Producer for Gray Television’s Digital Content Center, the company’s digital news hub for 100+ TV stations. Ed also worked as a writer and editor for WebMD. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, Ed is the author of two children’s book series: “The Daily Rounds of a Hound” and “Vail’s Tales.” 

Read more about or contact Ed Payne

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