Specially Painted Aircraft Carried 8 Cheetahs From Namibia To India? No, Viral Photo Isn't Of Indian Flight

An image of a plane with a specially painted animal print has gone viral across social media. The image is viral in the context of the eight radio-collared cheetahs being brought in a special cargo Boeing flight from Namibia.

Five male and three female cheetahs were brought to Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park under Project Cheetah, which is the world's first inter-continental large wild carnivore translocation project.

Claim:

The viral image shows an aeroplane with the painting of a tiger on the nose cone. The news agency ANI tweeted the image with the caption, "High Commission of India in Windhoek, Namibia tweets the visual of the Indian aircraft which has reached Namibia to receive cheetahs to be brought to Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park. PM Narendra Modi will be present in the park on Sept 17 for the reintroduction."

The image was associated with the transportation of the eight cheetahs claiming that the Indian Boeing aircraft was painted in the resemblance of a cheetah for the occasion.

Hindustan Times, Zee News and Free Press Journal published the image with the claim that the image shows an Indian aircraft transporting the cheetahs.

Netizens also circulated the image across social media.

Fact Check:

The Logical Indian fact-check team verified the viral claim and found it false. We found the painting on the aircraft's nose is a tiger, not a cheetah. We found that an Indian carrier does not own the aircraft.

We conducted a reverse image search on the viral image and came across the following image on Wikimedia.

Taking a cue from this, we conducted a keyword search with the relevant keywords and came across this article from DailyMail, published on July 3, 2015.

The DailyMail article stated that the face of an Amur tiger was printed on the front of a Transaero Boeing 747-400 aircraft. The article notes that the painted aircraft was a joint project of the Amur Tiger Center and Transaero Airlines and was displayed to the public at Moscow Vnukovo airport. The aircraft is entitled as 'Tiger Flight', the project aimed to bring attention to tiger conservation efforts. As per the report, the 'Tiger Flight' plane will be used on highly popular routes to draw maximum attention to the efforts.

We then conducted a keyword search with the terms 'Transaero Boeing 747- tiger flight' and came across an article on Simple Flying published on May 28, 2022.

The Transaero Boeing 747-400, known for its "Caring for Tigers together" livery, was kept in storage at Teruel since the decline of Transaero in 2015. The jet was then acquired by Sharjah-based Aquiline International in 2021. The SimpleFlying article notes, "In April 2021, Aquiline International selected the 747 and two of its sister aircraft for conversion into freighters."

We conducted a keyword search for the history of ownership of the plane. On the website, Planespotters, we came across the ownership data of the aircraft. The website mentions that the aircraft was painted with special colours with the theme of a tiger in June 2015. The paint was done for the Caring The Tigers Together project. The Indian government is not mentioned in the listing.

We also came across a tweet by DD India which clearly shows the logo of Terra Avia on the side of the plane. Terra Avia is an airline based in the Chișinău International Airport in Chișinău, Moldova.

Conclusion:

In our Fact Check, we found that the painting on the aircraft's nose is a tiger and not a cheetah. We found that the aircraft is not owned by an Indian carrier but by Terra Avia, a Moldovian airline. Thus, we are able to ascertain that the viral claim with the image is false.

If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.

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