What was claimed
A video shows a firefighting plane crashing in Los Angeles during the recent wildfires.
Our verdict
Incorrect. The footage was filmed in Talca, Chile, in January 2024.
Plane crash video not linked to fires in LA
A video circulating on social media with claims it shows a firefighting plane crashing in Los Angeles is actually of an incident in Chile in early 2024.
The video, which has been shared on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, appears to be filmed from inside a car, and shows a small aircraft on fire before crashing into a road.
It has been shared with captions relating it to the LA wildfires, which have killed at least 24 people and burnt 40,000 acres of the city since the start of the month.
But this video is unrelated to the wildfires in Los Angeles. Using Google Lens, Full Fact traced the video back to a YouTube short posted by Al Jazeera in January 2024, captioned: “Video from Chile shows a small plane exploding as it crashed onto a highway. The crash claimed the life of the pilot and at least four people were injured.”
The miscaptioned version has been vertically flipped. The Al Jazeera short says the video was taken on 15 January 2024 in Talca, Chile.
We found the same video had also been posted by the Telegraph on 16 January 2024. The Telegraph said the footage showed a Chilean firefighter plane crashing into a road near the Panguilemo Aerodrome in Talca on 15 January 2024, after it “snagged on electricity poles while flying low”. The incident was also reported by Newsweek.
A firefighting aircraft was grounded for days of repairs in LA last week after it collided with a drone, but no-one was injured. Full Fact was unable to find any credible news reports of aeroplanes crashing in the area.
News stories receiving international attention such as the LA fires can quickly become the subject of misinformation online, with false claims being difficult to correct after they have been shared widely. We’ve already debunked an AI-generated image and digitally created video claiming to show the LA fires.
Before sharing images you see on social media it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is genuine. Our toolkits on identifying misleading media can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the footage shows a plane that crashed in Chile in January 2024.