Twitter posts featuring photos of a plane on fire claimed that an aircraft crashed at Nairobi’s international airport. However, the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) clarified there was an emergency drill at the airport, not an accident. AFP Fact Check also found that one of the photos shared online shows a 2019 Russian plane crash.
“BREAKING NEWS JKIA plane crash,” reads a tweet published on May 31, 2023.
A screenshot of the false post, taken on May 31, 2023
The post includes an image of a plane burning on an airport runway.
The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), which lies on the outskirts of Nairobi, is one of Africa’s busiest airports (archived here), handling 6.5 million passengers last year, according to government figures.
Similar claims also circulated in other tweets and on TikTok.
However, the claim that a plane crashed at JKIA is false.
Emergency drill
On May 31, 2021, the Kenya Airports Authority tweeted that an aircraft overflying Nairobi “encountered an incident at JKIA”.
A screenshot of the tweet, taken on May 31, 2023
Mainstream media then reported a “plane accident at JKIA”.
However, as reported by AFP, KAA released a statement less than an hour after the first tweet clarifying that they had conducted a “full-scale emergency drill” at JKIA.
The drill included a “simulated incident of an aircraft that crushed at the airport (sic)”, according to the statement.
“The primary objective of this exercise was to test and evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the airport’s emergency response procedures,” it said.
“This incident was entirely simulated and did not pose any real danger to passengers, crew members or airport operations.”
Russian crash
Several tweets included a photo of a burning plane on a runway.
Using a reverse image search, AFP Fact Check found the original image (archived here) was from a 2019 Russian plane crash that killed 41 people.
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