Animated plane crash video falsely portrayed as Brazil 2024 air disaster

The posts circulated after a plane crashed in the Brazilian state of São Paulo on August 9, 2024, killing all 62 people on board (archived link).

Videos showed the ATR 72-500 aircraft in a terrifying downward spiral before crashing into a residential area in the city of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers northwest of Brazil's financial capital, Sao Paulo.

The plane, owned by Voepass Airlines, crashed almost vertically, landed on its belly and burst into flames. The impact was so powerful that it was almost “flattened,” said São Paulo firefighter Olivia Perroni Cazo.

Video game

Google's reverse image search found an earlier version of the video, uploaded on August 10, 2024 by TikTok user @fly_zone77.

The video was captioned, among other things: “Moments before the plane crash in Brazil.”

However, the TikTok user's profile showed that the account posts clips from the action-adventure video game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5) (archived link).

The video game's features include the simulation of plane crashes (archived link).

The TikTok account has regularly posted more animated videos of plane crashes.

AFP also noted that the aircraft shown in the circulating video was not the twin-propeller Voepass ATR 72-500 model that crashed in Brazil (archived link).

Below you can see a screenshot comparison of the fake video (left) and the official photo of the ATR72-500 aircraft (right), with the elements highlighted by AFP present:

Witness videos of the incident – ​​as reported by Spanish television station Noticias Telemundo and Argentine newspaper Clarin – show the plane spinning and showing no visible signs of fire before the crash (archived links here and here).

AFP has published tips for identifying computer-generated videos of plane crashes.