Looks scary, that LiveLeak video you probably saw today of the drone striking the planeās wing, doesnāt it? Stuff like that is every plane passengerās worst nightmare. The good news is that itās totally, verifiably, 100 percent fake.
Hereās the video in case you havenāt seen it. It shows what appears to be a Southwest Airlines-liveried plane going into distress after a flying drone destroys its wing. We arenāt show what happens next, but itās not a sight any traveler wants to see.
We saw it too, but after doing some checking around, we discovered itās not real.
FlightClub editor Collin Krum got in touch with Southwest Airlines officials, who said they have no reports of drones hitting any of their aircraft. So thatās out.
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Second, if you freeze frame, you can see it doesnāt say Southwest Airlines on the wing ā it says Branit.com. As TheNextWeb reported today, that domain belongs to a Kansas City visual effects designer named Bruce Branit. He latter copped to making the video on Twitter:
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Looks like he succeeded in getting it viral, too. Iāll give Branit credit for making a cool video thatās pretty convincing, at least at first glance.
Iām just glad itās not real, because now I have one less thing to worry about on flights.
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.