With the entire country under the spell of monsoon, social media has been inundated with photographs and videos of the mayhem caused by the rains. One such video is being shared, which is claimed to be of Nagpur airport. Times of India on its website uploaded a video on July 8, 2018 and reported that the airport has been flooded due to heavy rain. The video shows rain water being mopped off the floor near the check-in counter. The video has now been deleted by Times of India. A screenshot of the same is posted below.
Social media users on Twitter and Facebook took potshots at the BJP government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the state of the airport at Nagpur.
Even DXB, Heathrow and Kennedy airport can’t provide you shower while checking-in but Nagpur Airport surely can. #Nagpur #NagpurRains #NagpurAirport #Rain #Worldcup pic.twitter.com/Jj1aS1MqJH
— k!t@π¶ ~ 🏆 (@ChhapriSala) July 6, 2018
Vijay Darda, Chairman of Lokmat India also tweeted the video claiming it is of Nagpur airport.
Rains in #Nagpur have flooded roads, inundated many parts of the city including Vidhan Bhavan campus; leakages at airport too. Why are our infrastructure & maintenance so shoddy? Why do citizens have to suffer due to callous, careless attitude of authorities? Shame on the system! pic.twitter.com/C2AVUoG97J
— Vijay Darda (@vijayjdarda) July 6, 2018
Where is the video from?
Alt News broke up the video into individual frames using the InVid software for videos, and found instances wherein this video had been uploaded earlier. We followed a link to a YouTube video according to which this is an airport in Kerala. The videos uploaded on YouTube claim that this is the Kozhikode (Calicut) airport.
In fact, Alt News found that this video had been uploaded as early as March 2018. The video posted below was uploaded on the YouTube channel Asianet HD on March 24, 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XilC2EauNPk&feature=youtu.be
In all likelihood, the flooding of the check-in section as seen in the video could be due to a leakage in the air conditioning system. Alt News could not independently verify the claim that it is the Kozhikode airport in Kerala. However, the fact that this video has been online since at least March 2018 establishes that this is not the Nagpur airport flooded due to the recent rain that lashed the city.
Video of Mexico City airport passed off as flooding of Mumbai airport
Similar mischief was played with the Mumbai airport which, it was claimed, was flooded after a video showing an inundated tarmac was shared widely. However, the video was of Mexico City international airport and was first posted in August 2017.
Mumbai Airport flooded. Flights delayed and cancelled. Please check your flight status online before heading to the airport. #MumbaiRains #MumbaiRains2018 #Weather #Airport pic.twitter.com/yfRGBshLUS
— The News Jockey (@TheNewsJockey) July 10, 2018
Infrastructural durability is understandably a cause of concern when faced with nature’s fury, particularly in India where public works are infamous for often being brittle. This does not however warrant creating panic by sharing an old video which a mainstream news organisation like Times of India has unfortunately succumbed to. An old video of March 2018 was presented as a current event and could have been avoided by resorting to basic verification.
