Fact check: Video showing Afghan man riding plane engine is fake

After the Taliban moved into Kabul’s US-controlled airport and strengthened its grip on Afghanistan, thousands of civilians were left desperately seeking evacuation on Aug. 16.

Horrifying videos of thousands of men trying to get on flights at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport are all over the internet.

Amidst the chaos, a particular video of a man clinging to the turbine engine of an airplane while it is flying has gone viral on social media with the claim that he is an Afghan citizen trying to Kabul.


Facebook page Gulistan News Channel’, shared the video with the caption, “Citizens of Afghanistan scared of TB occupation hugging deaths and riding on the wings of the Airplane.” Several Twitter users too shared the clip with similar claims in their captions. But the video isn’t real. It’s a digital creation that was first shared in 2020 by a channel named ‘Quân hoa’.

In this video, a man can be seen doing various activities like sitting, working, and cooking on the turbine engine of the flying airplane, which demonstrates some fine photoshopping skills.

The about section of the YouTube channel is written in Vietnamese text, which when translated to English, reads as, “Channel specializing in interesting Vlog videos between daily life and many interesting things from Photoshop. This is my official channel, no sub-channels.”

Therefore, it can be concluded that the viral video which claims to be of an Afghan man clinging to the turbine engine of a flying airplane is fake and just a product of photoshop skills.

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