EgyptAir Flight MS804 ‘fireball’ video debunked as hoax

A video purporting to show footage of the missing EgyptAir plane in the sky engulfed in flames has been proven to be a hoax.

As often happens in the aftermath of tragedy, some misinformation spread online Thursday morning as news organizations scrambled to gather information about what happened to the ill-fated EgyptAir plane.

Authorities are still investigating the circumstances that led to Flight MS804 vanishing over the Mediterranean Sea near Greece while on its way from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris to Cairo.

Egypt’s civil aviation minister said Thursday that the disappearance was most likely the result of terrorism, rather than a technical issue. And EgyptAir confirmed that it found the wreckage.

While world leaders were being briefed on the developing situation, several hoaxes — such as the fireball video — gained traction and were widely shared across the Internet.

Those sharing the video claimed it showed the Airbus A320 aircraft bursting into a fireball. Australia’s 7 News Sydney included footage from the video in an English-language broadcast about Greek officials looking into reports of a ball of fire in the sky. The network noted that the footage had not yet been verified.

Web searches confirm that the video has been around since at least December 2015. At that time, U.S. military authorities said it depicted debris from a Russian rocket reentering the atmosphere over California.

That video wasn’t the only incident of Internet hijinks connected to the plane story.

Several Internet hoaxers also took to social media posing as family members of passengers on the missing plane, only to mock members of the media who then contacted them for comment.

The situation is still under investigation, and not all of the information has been verified. Tarek Wahba — captain of the Maersk Ahram ship, which has been assisting in the search — posted photos of debris he found floating in the water. But it was not immediately clear whether the debris was from the EgyptAir plane.

EgyptAir Vice President Ahmed Adel told CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour that they found the wreckage, and that there was no distress signal from the plane before it crashed.

French President Francois Hollande said, “No hypothesis should be ruled out,” regarding the cause of the flight’s disappearance.