Does a video clip capture what was happening inside an Air India plane that was forced to return to Chicago on March 5, 2025, due to out-of-order toilets? No, that's not true: The video predates the incident by two months. It started circulating on social media in early January 2025.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on March 9, 2025. It opened:
🔥🚨BREAKING: An Air India flight was forced to return on a 10 hour trip to Chicago Illinois because their toilets were clogged with poop leaving hundreds Indians trapped on a plane with no restroom.
Air India Flight 126 was making its way over Greenland on March 5 when 11 out of its 12 toilets broke down, with the only working toilet located in the business class section for some 300 passengers to use, View From The Wing reported.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Mar 11 15:47:19 2025 UTC)
The entry implied that the shared footage was captured inside the troubled aircraft, but that is incorrect.
On March 5, 2025, Air India Flight 126 experienced an issue with lavatories, as the company later confirmed. According to a BBC article (archived here), eight out of 12 toilets went out of service after several hours in the air, and the plane bound for India's capital Delhi returned to Chicago.
Historical data available on FlightRadar24 (archived here) confirm that Air India Flight 126 landed at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago from which it took off:
(Source: FlightRadar 24 screenshot taken on Tue Mar 11 16:16:42 2025 UTC)
However, the video from the post on X reviewed in this fact-check predates the incident. It has been online at least since January 5, 2025, (archived here), when it was published on X. The caption mentioned another Air India flight said to have been canceled in London, UK, on that day. Lead Stories could not independently verify those details.
One day earlier, the UK's weather service issued a series of warnings (archived here) that led to airport closures in Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool (archived here), but as they started to reopen on January 5, 2025, disruptions continued to persist (archived here).
Lead Stories contacted Air India for additional comments but did not receive an immediate response.
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