DigitEye India Fact Checkers
A viral video claims that in 1954 a Santiago Airlines Flight 513 took off from Aachen, West Germany for Porto Alegre, Brazil. The journey which would have been completed in 18 hours took 35 years. The video adds that the flight landed in 1989 at the Porto Alegre airport. However, when officials opened the plane, they saw skeletons that were in the passenger seats and even the cockpit.
Digiteye India received a request to fact-check this viral video on WhatsApp.
When the team looked on social media platforms to find out the origin of this viral video, we saw that this video has been circulating on social media since August 2023. A viral tweet mentions that they found this video on TikTok – a video sharing platform that has been banned in India by the government.
Just saw a video of 513 plane story on TikTok that disappeared for over 35 years & reappeared. Wow
WATCH 👇pic.twitter.com/PCS5wLGEQM
— POOJA!!! (@PoojaMedia) August 18, 2023
FACT CHECK
To verify the claims made in the video, we searched Google to find out the details about Santiago Airlines. The Digiteye India team could not find any verified record that mentioned this airline. There is no record of any current airline that was formerly known as Santiago Airlines.
Next, we looked at the city of Aachen. Aachen is a city that is situated in Western Germany. It borders Belgium and the Netherlands to the west. The city has a single airport – the Maastricht Aachen Airport. When we looked at its history and even its present data, we found out that the airport does not have international flights that depart or arrive. Going by the viral video, the Santiago Airline flight had to fly between Aachen and Porto Alegre crossing the Atlantic, which happens to be an international route. There is no data that shows Aachen has international flights.
When we looked further, we did not find any credible source which could confirm the occurence of this event. If an event like this did occur, it would have been covered by media outlets extensively. In 1989, we already had camera and videos in place that would have covered this incident. Adding to this, it would also have been studied by the scientists. Additionally, there is no scientific study on this topic that could substantiate the claim.
The video mentions wormholes and blackholes. According to NASA, a black hole is “A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying. Because no light can get out, people can’t see black holes. They are invisible.” NASA telescopes have found the the most distant black hole.
On the other hand, Britannica describes worm hole as a “hypothetical passageway in space-time that would connect a black hole and a white hole.” Albert Einstein’s theory predicts the existence of wormholes but scientists have not discovered them till date.
The claims made in the video are conspiracy theories and urban myths.
CLAIM: A Santiago Airline Flight 513 took off from Aachen in 1954 and landed 35 years later in Porto Alegre in 1989 with human skeletons.
CONCLUSION: The claims made in the video are substances of urban myths and conspiracy theories. There is no record that proves Santiago Airlines did exist. The Aachen airport never had any transatlantic flights. The claims violate the laws of physics and biology. No credible or verified information about this incident exists online.
RATING: Totally False – 
