A rumor circulating online in late 2024 claimed that a group of researchers aboard the vessel Icebreaker Aurora — led by a woman named Dr. Amelia Frost — found a long-lost airplane known as Flight 2317. According to the story, the crew discovered the aircraft entombed in an Arctic iceberg.
On Sept. 21, 2024, the Love Recap YouTube channel published a more than 18-minute-long video promoting this story. By Oct. 11, the video had racked up over 570,000 views.
The video's YouTube synopsis read:
When Dr. Amelia Frost and her team stumble upon a commercial airliner frozen in an Arctic iceberg, they think they've solved one of aviation's greatest mysteries. But as they investigate the perfectly preserved interior of Flight 2317, they realize this is no ordinary crash and scream in horror at what they find. Strange ice formations, passengers frozen in time, and a shocking video reveal a dark conspiracy that's been buried for decades. Will Amelia and her team survive long enough to expose the truth? Or will powerful forces ensure this chilling secret remains frozen in time?
However, the story was fictional and at least some of the video's elements were fake. As such, we rated this claim as false.
We found no trace of any information about a missing airplane referred to as Flight 2317, nor did we locate details about anyone named Dr. Amelia Frost. The video featured narration produced by an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool. The thumbnail image and many of the displayed pictures in the lengthy story appeared to have been created using AI and/or image-editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop. In fact, it's possible a user created the entire video with a simple prompt input into an AI video-creation tool.
The video's synopsis told of a supposed "shocking video" that would "reveal a dark conspiracy that's been buried for decades." The finale of the story tells of one of the researchers finding the video file on a "USB drive" tucked away inside the airplane. That video file supposedly reveals that the passengers realized in their final moments they were on an "experimental flight." The tale ends with the researchers escaping the plane just before it plunges into the icy depths of the Arctic Ocean.
1968 Plane Crash Rediscovered in 2022
While the story in the popular YouTube video was not true and involved plenty of fake elements, we did locate one slightly similar true story.
On Aug. 9, 2022, The Guardian reported that hikers located the wreckage of a small airplane in the Swiss Alps in 1968. The article also detailed discoveries of human remains not related to the crash, due to soaring temperatures and melting glaciers.
In the case of this real plane crash, crews had already recovered the bodies of the crash victims decades before, meaning the wreckage wasn't so much lost as it was abandoned:
In the first week of August, a mountain guide discovered the wreckage of a plane that crashed over the Aletsch glacier, near the Jungfrau and Mönch mountain peaks, in June 1968.
"From afar, I thought I was looking at two backpacks," said Dominik Nellen, 38. Closer inspection revealed the objects to be wreckage pieces of a Piper Cherokee aircraft that crashed in the area on June 30, 1968, carrying on board a teacher, a chief medical officer and his son, all from Zurich. The bodies were recovered at the time, but the wreckage was not.
Sky News reported on the same incident with several high-resolution photos, while Inside Edition shared video.
it's funny, most people don't understand that glaciers advance and recede advanced and recede. we're at the tail end of it ice age, we don't know if this planet is supposed to have ice on its poles. and if the upper atmosphere winds change, will be in a polar vortex. people need to understand and do the research. humans do not cause this climate change the planet does
51-50justthissideofloco
35m ago
Sounds like a Clive Cussler novel, had he not died.
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