Does video show Afghan man atop plane’s engine in flight? Fact Check

A short video of what appears to be a man led down on the engine of a flying plane is spreading on social media, with the assertion that the man is fleeing Taliban takeover in Afghanistan that occurred during August 2021.

FALSE

The below video, taken from Twitter, appears to show grainy footage of a man led down on the engine of a plane mid-flight. The claim is that the man hitched a ride on the plane in a bid to escape Taliban rule in Afghanistan, who reclaimed power in the country amid a US military withdrawal from the country following a 20-year occupation.

#Citizens of Afghanistan scared of TB occupation hugging deaths and riding on the wings of the Airplane

However, it does not take long to determine that the video is fake, for two reasons.
– One, we were able to identify the person who made the video (and a number of similarly fake videos.)
– And two, such a feat is not possible as depicted in the video.

Firstly, the video first appeared online (in better quality since this is the original version) in August 2020, from Vietnamese TikTok user huyquanhoa, who had uploaded a number of digitally altered videos on their profile. The video, below, comes with the [translated] caption “Experience VN E Lai’s recliner for the first time“.

@huyquanhoa

Lần đầu trải nghiệm ghế nằm của VN E Lai #huyquanhoa #maybay

♬ nhạc nền – Huy Xuân Mai

The same user has also uploaded a number of similar videos including one with him playing a video game on the same plane engine.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

Secondly, climbing aboard the wing of a plane this size is an unlikely feat. Not only would the winds be too strong to simply lie on an engine during flight, but the cruising altitude for most large planes would not only deprive any stowaway of adequate oxygen, leading to unconsciousness and then death, but temperatures can dip below -60c, also causing hypothermia.
 
While there have been a handful of reports of stowaways surviving these types of flights, they are rare and the stowaway is in the undercarriage of the plane, not atop its engines.

Also, while there were a number of reports of people from Afghanistan attempting to flee the country by clinging to the sides of a US military plane and subsequently falling from that plane, this video does not show such an occurrence.

As such, we rank this claim as false.