Animated plane crash video misrepresented as a Brazilian air disaster

Video shared by a social media user from Cameroon shows a Thai Airlines plane circling over an urban landscape as flames and smoke pour from its engines before landing on a beach.

The posts were distributed after a plane crashed in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo 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 people praising the pilot's flying skills.

“Wow, the pilot is so great… good idea to land in the sea to save all the passengers on this plane, thank God.” (sic)“wrote one user.

But the claim that the video shows a plane crash in Brazil is false.

Video game footage

Several clues suggest that this footage comes from a computer game, said AFP video game correspondent Kilian Fichou.

“It definitely comes from a video game – especially the modeling of the buildings and vegetation, [and] the camera movements,” he told AFP Fact Check.

Modeling is the way game developers shape objects in a video game to appear three-dimensional (archived here).

“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 came from.

About 10 seconds into the Facebook footage, a building appears with a sign reading “Kayton” at the top.

Using a keyword search for “Kayton video game,” AFP Fact Check discovered that the location is a fictional bank in “Grand Theft Auto” (archived here).

Additionally, the game features a plane crash storyline, of which there are dozens of videos online (archived here).

AFP debunked a similar claim carried in Tagalog, English, Spanish and Italian.

Plane crash in Brazil

Using a keyword search for “Brazil plane crash,” AFP Fact Check found video from news reports about the tragic August 9 incident (archived here).

Videos showed the ATR 72-500 plane turning downwards before crashing into a residential area in the city of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers (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, hitting with such force that it was almost “flattened,” said Sao Paulo Fire Department Lt. Olivia Perroni Cazo.

The aircraft shown in the circulating video was not the ATR 72-500 twin-propeller model operated by Voepass that crashed (archived here).

AFP Fact Check has published tips for spotting computer-generated videos of plane crashes, which you can read here.