Does an authentic photo show two Black women who were the pilots of the Delta Flight 4819 that crash-landed and flipped over in Toronto on February 17, 2025? No, that's not true: The inverted image in a social media post is 16 years old. It shows the first all-African-American female crew to operate a commercial jet for Atlantic Southeast Airlines. As of February 19, 2025, the pilots of the Delta flight hadn't been publicly identified.
The implied claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on February 18, 2025. The post's caption said:
DEI is amazing.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Feb 19 14:37:03 2025 UTC)
The post does not provide any evidence to support the implied assertion that it's showing an authentic photo of two Black women who piloted the Delta flight that crash-landed in Toronto.
Google search
Using Google Lens, a reverse image search found that the image in the post was from February 12, 2009, not February 2025. It features Captain Rachelle Jones Kerr and First Officer Stephanie Grant, who made history as the first all-female, all-African-American crew to fly a commercial flight from Atlanta to Nashville, Tennessee, on Atlantic Southeast Airlines. A screenshot of the search results is shown below.
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Wed Feb 19 15:10:23 2025 UTC)
The photo appeared in an article (archived here) published March 2, 2009, in Hiiraan Online. This is what the story looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Hiiraan Online screenshot taken on Wed Feb 19 15:26:49 2025 UTC)
The article was republished from WXIA TV, also known as 11Alive. The story no longer appears on the station's website.
Read more
For more Lead Stories fact checks about claims involving Delta Flight 4819, click here.
