Before You Share: Air India Crash Misinformation Alert

June 14, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

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Hello,

An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner flight from Ahmedabad to London crashed shortly after take-off on June 12, 2025, with 242 passengers on board. The tragic incident took the lives of 241 people with only one survivor. 

Shortly after, several old and unrelated visuals started circulating on social media. Read on!

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For instance, an image of an Air India Express plane split open was linked to the London bound Air India flight. However, BOOM ran a reverse image search and found several news articles from 2020 carrying the same picture while reporting about a Dubai-Kozhikode plane crash at the Kozhikode International Airport in Kerala.

A 2023 video of a plane crash in Nepal accidentally live streamed by a passenger went viral with a false claim that it shows visuals from the Air India flight that crashed minutes after take-off in Ahmedabad.

BOOM found that the footage shows the crash of a Yeti Airlines flight near Nepal's Pokhara on January 15, 2023, which led to the death of all the 72 passengers on board. The video shows a live stream by an Indian passenger, in the moments leading up to the crash.

An in-flight selfie showing a woman with former Gujarat Chief Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Rupani in the background was shared as his “last photo” before the Air India crash. BOOM found that the photo is from 2021, and is unrelated to the recent tragedy.

What can you do in such situations?

  • Pause & Question: Does something feel off about the image/video?

  • Look Closely: Zoom in! Any inconsistencies or odd details?

  • What’s the source?: Is this from a trustworthy, official source?

  • Find Evidence: Are there links to reliable sources? Skeptical if it's just an opinion.

  • Reverse Image Search: See where else this image has appeared online. Use Google Lens, Yandex, etc

  • InVID & WeVerify (Google Chrome plugin): Helps check videos by letting you do reverse image searches on video frames.

  • AI or Not: Upload an image to see if it might be AI-generated. BOOM noticed several AI images going viral claiming to show the aftermath of the Air India crash.

P. S. Remember, getting it right » getting it first.

DECODE

Your Next QR Code Scan May Take You To A Phony Site

Subhransu Nath thought he was doing the right thing. After buying a new gaming mouse from electronics brand Portronics, he scanned the Quick Response (QR) code on the box to register his warranty. Instead of landing on the company's website, his phone opened a gambling site.

QR codes are everywhere now. We scan them to pay at restaurants, check parking meters, and access product information.

The automatic trust on these squares is exactly what makes them dangerous, says cybersecurity expert Ashish Jha.

Many people scan QR codes without verifying their source or previewing the URL—an automatic trust that hackers exploit. Once scanned, a malicious QR code can lead users to websites that install spyware, steal payment information, or trick them into making payments.

Ashish Jha, cybersecurity expert

The problem is simple: unlike a regular web link, you can't see where a QR code will take you until you've already scanned it. And by then, it might be too late. Hera Rizwan reports.

'FAKE NEWS’ YOU ALMOST FELL FOR

🔍 Sudarshan News shared a video on X with the false and communal claim that it showed a Muslim man taking a calf to be sacrificed on Bakrid in North East Delhi. Read 🔗 Rohit Kumar’s ↗️ fact-check.

🔍 Several Indian media outlets fell for a satirical post on X by digital entrepreneur Jon Yongfook, who wrote that he and the design team had been fired by Apple following the unveiling of the new ‘Liquid Glass’ design for iOS 26. 🔗 Anmol Alphonso ↗️ debunked the claim.

🔍 Is this photo of fugitive business tycoon Vijay Mallya dining with Congress leader Supriya Shrinate real? Find out in 🔗 Srijit Das’ ↗️ fact-check.

🅱️ RECOMMENDS

This week's recommendation is: The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction

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Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.

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