By: Anurag Baruah
December 23 2022
Misleading: Photos show a snake found on an Air India Express flight on December 10, 2022.
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Fact-Check
The Verdict Misleading
While a snake was found on the Calicut-Dubai Air India flight, the photos claiming to show that are from an incident that took place in 2016 in Mexico
Claim ID 39349044
Context
On December 10, 2022, a snake was found on a Dubai-bound Air India Express flight from Calicut. According to a Hindustan Times report, a snake was found in the cargo hold of the Air India Express Boeing B737-800 aircraft after it landed at the Dubai airport. The report added that India’s aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered a detailed probe into the incident.
Amid such developments, two photos have gone viral on social media, claiming to be of the ‘Air India snake incident’ from December 10. Times of Oman, a newspaper from the Sultanate of Oman, has published a news report of the incident on its website with two photos that show a snake. The report was also shared on the Facebook page of the newspaper on December 12, 2022. The particular post has been widely shared, and several other social media posts have also used the two photos to make similar claims.
In Fact
After a reverse image search, we found that the two photos date back to 2016. The Indian Express published the photos as part of a news report on November 8, 2016. According to the report, the photos are of an incident when a snake appeared on an Aeromexico flight from Torreon to Mexico City. From the report, it is also clear that the two photos in question are actually screenshots taken from a video shot by a passenger named Indalecio Medina on his phone. The video shows the snake wriggling briefly behind the overhead luggage compartment, as if trapped, before partially dropping down into the cabin.
We also found the original video published on Indalecio Medina’s Twitter profile on November 7, 2016. Indalecio wrote, “The flying snake... ha ha ha. A unique experience on the Torreón-Mexico Flight, Aeroméxico Flight 231. That if ... Landing priority” (Translated from Spanish).
CNN had also reported the incident in 2016, and the video could be found on the Spanish edition of its website, Medina’s Twitter handle was credited for the video. ‘’On a flight from Torreón to Mexico City, a snake caused terror among the passengers, and the company, Aeroméxico, investigates how the reptile got into the passenger cabin,” read the report (translated from Spanish).
Further, a keyword search took us to the Twitter profile of an ANI journalist who had reported on the December 10 incident of a snake being found in the Air India Express plane. While sharing the link to the ANI news report authored by him, he also included the two photos from 2016. Though he mentioned 'file pic' in his post to make it clear that pictures are only representative and not from the actual December 10 incident, the detail seems to have been missed by many.
The Verdict
While it is true that a snake was found on an Air India Express flight on December 10, 2022, the photos claiming to show the serpent are actually from 2016. Therefore, we are marking the claim as misleading.