The video shared by a social media user based in Cameroon shows a Thai Airlines plane circulating above an urban landscape with flames and smoke pouring from its engines before landing on a beach.
The posts circulated after a plane crashed in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state on August 9, 2024, killing all 62 people on board (archived here).
Social media users viewed the post more than 159,000 times, with several individuals praising the pilot’s flying abilities.
“Wow the pilot is so amazing … good idea to land in the sea for save all the passengers of that airplane thanks God (sic),” wrote one user.
But the claim that the video shows a plane crash in Brazil is false.
Video game footage
Several clues indicate this footage is from a computer game, said Kilian Fichou AFP’s video game correspondent.
“It’s definitely from a video game — especially the modelling of the buildings and vegetation, [and] the camera movements,” he told AFP Fact Check.
Modelling refers to how game designers shape objects in a video game to appear three-dimensional (archived here).
The “bird’s eye view” — or the perspective of a bird in flight — is a classic camera angle in video games, he added.
Several visual clues helped AFP Fact Check confirm which video game the footage is from.
About 10 seconds into the Facebook footage, a building appears with a sign reading “Kayton” on top.
Using a keyword search for “Kayton video game,” AFP Fact Check found the location is a fictional bank in Grand Theft Auto (archived here).
Moreover, the game includes a plane crash storyline, of which there are dozens of videos online (archived here).
AFP debunked a similar claim shared in Tagalog, English, Spanish, and Italian.
Brazil plane crash
Using a keyword search for “plane crash Brazil,” AFP Fact Check found a video from news reports about the tragic incident on August 9 (archived here).
Videos showed the ATR 72-500 plane in a downward spin before it crashed into a residential area in the town of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Brazil’s financial capital Sao Paulo.
The plane, operated by airline Voepass, fell almost vertically, landed on its belly and exploded in flames, striking with such force that it was nearly “flattened”, said Sao Paulo fire lieutenant Olivia Perroni Cazo.
The aircraft featured in the circulating video did not correspond with the twin-propeller ATR 72-500 model operated by Voepass which crashed (archived here).
AFP Fact Check has published tips on how to spot computer-generated videos of plane crashes, which you can read about here.
