Mumbai airport flooded? Republic, others share old image of inundated Chennai airport

A video of a waterlogged tarmac at an airport with ground crew crowded around the wheels of an airplane as several aircraft remain stranded in the background is being circulated on social media as a visual of the flooded Mumbai airport.

Maharashtra witnessed heavy torrential rain over the past few days, with the total death toll crossing 27, according to a Deccan Herald report. Several regions of Mumbai have been inundated, bringing daily activities to a standstill.

Claiming that operations at Mumbai airport were disrupted, news outlet Republic shared the video on X on August 19. The caption read: “#MumbaiRains | Over 250 flights delayed at Mumbai Airport as heavy rains flooded runways.” The post was later deleted; an archived version can be accessed here.

X user Priya Sinha (@iPriyaSinha), an anchor affiliated with the news channel Bharat 24, also shared the same video on August 19 but later deleted it. (Archive)

Several others on X, such as @limitlessfinan, @NewsTheTruthh, @Vignesh58Viki and @diplomattimes shared the video, suggesting it showed the Mumbai airport. (Archived links 1, 2, 3, 4)

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Fact Check

Alt News did reverse-image searches of some key frames from the viral video, which led us to an X post by Times Now from December 4, 2023, featuring the same clip. Going by the caption, the video showed the Chennai airport ravaged by Cyclone Michaung, which hit India’s southern states in December 2023.

#CycloneMichaung: Runway at Chennai airport flooded amid heavy rainfall across the city.#ChennaiRains #Chennai pic.twitter.com/6EyGfYt7CI

— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) December 4, 2023

This made it clear that the video was not recent and had been online for at least two years.

While investigating we also noticed a yellow signboard at the beginning of the video, which contains what seemed like GPS coordinates of the place (written in degrees, minutes, and seconds) — 12° 59 ‘5.9 ” N 80° 9’ 47.686” E.

On feeding these coordinates on Google Maps, the location showed up as Chennai, Tamil Nadu, not Mumbai, Maharashtra. The location was marked in the vicinity of ‘MAA’ on Google Maps, which is the airport code for Chennai International Airport.

Thus, claims suggesting that the video shows the waterlogged condition of Mumbai airport after the recent heavy rains there are false and misleading. The video actually shows the flooded Chennai International Airport after Cyclone Michaung in December 2023.