Video from 2023 Nepal plane crash viral as last moments from inside Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad

A 30-second-long video showing scenes from inside an aircraft is viral on social media and is being shared as footage showing last moments before the London-bound Air India flight, AI171, crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025. The Air India flight, with 242 passengers and crew onboard, took off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad at 1:39 pm and crashed into a residential area (Meghaninagar) of the city within minutes of takeoff.

The Hindu reported that flight AI171 from Ahmedabad to Gatwick gave a ‘Mayday’ call to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) before getting disconnected. A ‘Mayday’ call or alert is an internationally recognised SOS or distress emergency call. A Moneycontrol report citing someone from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said that the flight “departed from Ahmadabad at 1339 IST (0809 UTC) from runway 23. It gave a ‘Mayday’ call to ATC, but thereafter, no response was given by the aircraft to the calls made by ATC. Immediately after departure from runway 23, the aircraft fell on the ground outside the airport perimeter. Heavy black smoke was seen coming from the accident site”. Several casualties are feared, but so far, there has been no official statement from Air India or the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

The viral video, taken by a passenger shows scenes outside from the window seat before there is sudden chaos and screaming. X user @Honest_Cric_fan shared the video with claims that it was a Facebook Live that captured the plane crash in Ahmedabad. At the time of writing this, the post has received over 280,000 views. It was later deleted. (Archive)

Several other users, such as @kootpench, @thesumittewari, @Telugufeedsite, @bharatsmachar2, also shared the viral clip, claiming it shows the recent plane crash in Ahmedabad.

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Fact Check

To verify the viral claim that the clip is of the recent crash in Ahmedabad, we did a reverse image search on some key frames. This led us to a news report by the South China Morning Post from January 19, 2023, titled “Final moments of deadly Nepal plane crash caught on passenger’s Facebook live stream” and carried a screengrab from the now-viral clip.

The screengrab showed a man in a yellow sweatshirt with the caption, “Sonu Jaiswal smiles at his smartphone camera moments before the Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu crashed near Pokhara, Nepal, killing all 72 passengers on board. Photo: Facebook”.

We also found that the same viral video shared by news outlet Mid Day on January 16, 2023.

On June 12, the fact-checking unit of the government’s Press Information Bureau also said that the viral video is from the plane crash in Nepal in January 2023 and has been wrongly linked to the accident in Ahmedabad.

सोशल मीडिया पर एक पुरानी वीडियो को अहमदाबाद विमान हादसे से जोड़कर साझा किया जा रहा है। #PIBFactCheck

▶️ वीडियो नेपाल में जनवरी 2023 में हुए विमान हादसे की है।

▶️ आधिकारिक स्त्रोतों से प्राप्त सूचनाओं पर ही भरोसा करें।

▶️ अहमदाबाद विमान हादसे से जुड़ी प्रामाणिक जानकारी के… pic.twitter.com/5YUtbGbsa7

— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) June 12, 2025

Hence, the claim that the viral video shows a Facebook Live captured by a passenger on board the Ahmedabad-Gatwick flight that crashed on June 12 is false. The video shows a livestream by a flyer from 2023 and depicts moments before a Yeti Airlines flight crashed in Nepal in January 2023.