No, Akasa Air flight attendant did not deliver in-flight safety briefing in Sanskrit

What is the claim?

Multiple posts on social media platforms X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook have shared a video claiming that an in-flight safety announcement on an Akasa Air flight was made in Sanskrit, a classical language of India. These posts were accompanied by captions like “Flight announcement in Sanskrit..!!” Archived versions of such posts can be accessed here, here, here, and here.

X and Facebook posts claiming an in-flight announcement on Akasa Air was made in Sanskrit. (Source:X, Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

The video, depicting a flight attendant giving a safety briefing onboard what appears to be an Akasa Air flight, includes inlaid subtitles for the announcement, labeling the flight as Akasa Air 059A. However, the audio has been dubbed, and no such announcement in Sanskrit was made on any Akasa Air flight.

What is the truth?

Using a reverse image search, we found that the video was originally posted by a verified Instagram page called SanskritSparrow (archived here) on June 6, 2024. The caption shared with the video, which was last edited on June 8, reads: “The above content is a dubbed voice-over. This was not announced at any flight. This does not have anything to do with @akasaair management (sic).” The page is run by Samashti Gubbi, who frequently posts content and translations in Sanskrit.

Logically Facts contacted Gubbi on Instagram. She confirmed, “It was just a reel I made with my voice,” and added that she had recorded the video herself. Her original caption read, "What’s your favorite announcement? Mine is: Thank you for choosing us." She modified the caption after users in the comments mistakenly believed it was a real in-flight announcement.

We discovered that the official Akasa Air account on X commented on a post sharing the viral video. Although the original post has been deleted, a clarification from the airline on X states: “We would like to clarify that our inflight announcements are delivered in Hindi and English. The announcement in the video is not an official one and seems to be a dubbed video that has been shared.” Akasa Air’s official Instagram account left a similar comment on SanskritSparrow's reel.

Sanskrit, an ancient language part of the Indo-European language family, is spoken by approximately 25,000 people in India.

In 2018, the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation issued an advisory suggesting that airlines should consider using local languages for in-flight announcements to a feasible extent. However, airline executives stated that this was not practical due to the number of languages spoken in India.

The verdict

The claim that Akasa Airlines made an in-flight announcement in Sanskrit is false. The viral video was created by a content creator who dubbed it with Sanskrit audio. It was subsequently shared on social media without proper context.