IndiGo Pilot Spoke Bhojpuri, But Not at UP's Kushinagar Airport

IndiGo flight's pilot Siddhartha Kumar had greeted passengers in Bhojpuri before taking off from Patna to Delhi.

The claim states that it is from Uttar Pradesh's Kushinagar airport.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video of an IndiGo flight's pilot welcoming all onboard in Bhojpuri language, largely spoken in the state of Bihar and others including Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, is being shared on social media with the claim that the announcement was being made in Bhojpuri at the newly inaugurated Kushinagar airport in Uttar Pradesh.

However, we found that the pilot had indeed greeted the IndiGo passengers in Bhojpuri, but it was at the Patna airport in Bihar, also known as the Jayprakash Narayan international airport, and not the Kushinagar international airport.

We also got a confirmation from an Indigo official, who said that the airlines is still waiting for the government's nod for starting operations at Kushinagar airport.

CLAIM

The 59-second video was shared along with the claim that the video was from Kushinagar international airport.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

The video was shared by a Facebook page 'Gorakhpur Graphs' on 29 October with the video title in Hindi that translated to 'Bhojpuri in Kushinagar airport'.

The video has over 1.5 million views at the time of writing this article. Although the video hasn't been taken down, the admin had later clarified in the comments that the video is from the Patna airport. You can view the archive link here.

Social media users have shared the video along with similar claims and the archived links can be seen here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

Using relevant keywords on Facebook, we found the video by a media website 'Story Pick' posted on 30 October that reported that the IndiGo pilot had spoken to its passengers in Bhojpuri.

The video was credited to one Rajesh Kalra on Twitter.

We looked into Twitter and found the video posted by Rajesh Kalra on 29 October. He had tagged the pilot Siddhartha Kumar in the tweet.

Next, we looked for news reports and one by The Economic Times on 29 October read that before taking off from Patna to Delhi, IndiGo pilot Siddhartha Kumar had greeted passengers onboard in his native language, Bhojpuri.

"I am part of the linguistic culture (Bhojpuri) and I believe communication should happen to connect (with people). IndiGo is a fabulous and futuristic organisation, and it encourages constructive experimentation," Kumar was quoted saying by news agency PTI.

Flight announcements in India are usually made in English and Hindi, but when asked about the pilot's announcement in Bhojpuri, an IndiGo official told the news agency that it was "the airline's new initiative to reach out to customers in regional languages through announcements on regional routes."

Quint Hindi, too, had carried the video on 29 October.

We also got in touch with IndiGo and an official confirmed to us that no IndiGo flights are operational from the Kushinagar international airport, and that they are awaiting the government's nod to start flights from the airport.

Clearly, a video from the Patna airport is being falsely shared as from the Kushinagar airport in Uttar Pradesh.

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