Scenes From Video Game GTA V Shared as Clip of Russian Flight Crash

The 'flight SU 1492' mentioned in the viral posts did crash-land back in May 2019 in Russia.

Fact-Check |Video from a simulation of GTA V video game was shared as a Russian flight crashing.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video going viral on social media claims to show the visuals of Russian SU1492 flight crashing on a road after an unsuccessful emergency landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International airport.

But we found that while a Russian flight SU1492 did burst into flames during an attempted emergency landing in May 2019, the viral video was actually that of a computer-generated simulation from a game called Grand Theft Auto V.

CLAIM

The claim shared with the viral video said, "Few hours ago, Russian flight SU1492 crashed into a highway after an unsuccessful emergency landing at Moscow's Sheremetyet International Airport, destroying vehicles and killing 41 people."

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Photo: Facebook/Screenshot)

The same caption was used by several people on Facebook and also YouTube, archives of which can be found here, here and here.

We also got the video sent to us as a query on our WhatsApp tipline.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We conducted a keyword search for "Russian SU1492" and found news reports talking about an incident from May 2019.

According to a report, a Russian Aeroflot (SU 1492) plane burst into flames while making an emergency landing at the Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow on 5 May 2019. The flight, which was on its way to Murmansk, was struck by lightning and was forced to turn back to the airport. The engines caught fire upon landing that resulted in the deaths of 41 people, including two children.

Footage of the incident was released by Russian authorities and we found the footage on the The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation's (IC) YouTube channel.

The sequence of events seen the video released by Russian authorities do not match those seen in the viral video.

We then extracted keyframes from the viral video using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome Extension and conducted a reverse image search on some of them. While going through the search results, we found the same sequence posted on a YouTube channel of Dirceu Machado on 9 June 2021. The user mentioned in the description that the video was a simulation.

Other search results lead us to videos of similar simulations from a game called GTA V. GTA V is a action-adventure game, created by Rockstar Games and was released in 2013.

It is a single-player game set in San Andreas, a fictional state based in Southern California. The protagonists commit various heists while roaming around the countryside and the fictional city of Los Santos. The game is played from either a third-person or first-person perspective.

Other simulation videos found on YouTube from the GTA V showed elements seen in the viral video. We spotted the bridge in a video compilation of planes crashing in GTA V.

A link to the video can be found here.

(Photo: YouTube/Screenshot)

We reached out to Upanishad Sharma, a tech journalist and avid gamer. Sharma confirmed to The Quint that the aircraft seen in the viral video is know as Titan in the game.

The flight seen in the viral video is known as a Titan in GTA V game. 

(Photo Courtesy: Upanishad Sharma)

Sharma shared with us screenshots from the game

Comaprison of scenes from the viral video with the actual game.

(Photo Courtesy: Upanishad Sharma/Altered by The Quint)

Comaprison of scenes from the viral video with the actual game.

(Photo Courtesy: Upanishad Sharma/Altered by The Quint)

Evidently, footage from a game called GTA V was shared with a false claim that it showed a Russian aircraft crashing on a highway.

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