Fact Check: Old visual of aircraft with misleading claims goes viral about Air India clogged toilets
Siddharth Urmil 
Claim
A viral post shows a video that depicts scenes inside an aircraft. The video is shared with a caption: “Passengers were pooping in the aisles as their flight from Chicago, Illinois to Calcutta, India on March 5th, was forced to return to Chicago as 11 out of 12 onboard latrines were clogged up with poop and other bodily discharges.”
Fact Check
To verify the viral claim, DFRAC did a keyword search: ‘Chicago to Kolkata flight India Clogged Toilet’. This led us to news reports about a bizarre incident that occurred mid-flight on a flight from Chicago to Delhi, instead of Chicago to Kolkata, as the claimant claimed.
A news report by BBC, dated 11 March 2025, stated a flight from Chicago to Delhi turned around after passengers were trying to flush away plastic bags, rags, and clothes clogged up most of its toilets.
Subsequently, the flight crew found that eight of the 12 toilets in the aircraft could not be used. This caused discomfort to all on board.
Air India’s investigation, as quoted in the report, revealed that they found polythene bags, rags, and clothes that had been flushed down and stuck in the plumbing of the plane’s toilets.
Another report by NBC Chicago, dated 11 March 2025, stated Air India’s bizarre troubles at 40,000 feet. This incident confused investigators and cost the airline a lot. An aviation expert found this incident to be “pretty unprecedented”, he puts up questions on the decision to board a flight with an internal sabotage.
NBC Chicago informed about clogged toilets, as reported by BBC.
Air India stated the 5 March 2025 incident. Their investigative team found polythene bags, rags, and clothes that had been flushed down and stuck in the plumbing.
Furthermore, NBC Chicago reported the bomb scares that Air India continues to get.
To verify the video, we did a reverse image search of a keyframe from the video. This led us to an old video on X by a user with a caption that says: Passengers on an Air India flight at Gatwick Airport endured 7 hours of sitting on the plane, only to hear the dreaded announcement: “Flight canceled.”
This post, in turn, is taken from another X user. The user captioned it, “Passengers on an Air India plane in London Gatwick were told the flight was cancelled, after sitting on the plane for 7 hours.”
Both those posts are shared on 6 January 2025. So, this makes clear that the video shared by the claimant predates 6 January 2025 and does not reveal anything about the 5 March 2025 Chicago Delhi Air India Flight.
Conclusion
The claims made in the post are misleading. No one in the video was seen defecating in the aisle of the aircraft. The video is from 6 January 2025 and does not depict the 5 March incident. The claimant has claimed the flight route was Chicago to Calcutta, instead, it was from Chicago to Delhi flight.
The user claimed that “poop and other bodily discharges” had clogged the toilets in the aircraft, but the news reports reveal that polythene bags, rags, and clothes were flushed down and stuck in the plumbing. Additionally, as the news reports stated 8 out of 12 toilets were clogged, instead of what is claimed by the user 11 out of 12 toilets.
Megha Bajaj 
Aayushi Rana 