Tugboat mistaken for plane crash in Canary Islands

With all the panic surrounding the issue of airplane crashes right now, it’s understandable that people are quick to jump to conclusions when they see something seemingly amiss on the water.

Emergency Services in the Canary Islands mistook a large tugboat pulling a ship for an aircraft that had crashed into the water two miles off Gran Canaria Island, Reuters reports.

Coincidentally, however, today marks the anniversary of the tragedy of the two airliners colliding on a runway in the Canary Island of Tenerife, killing 583 people in 1977. According to Mirror News, the mix-up was caused when a local radio station broke the news that a passenger jet had landed on the water near Telde, Gran Canaria. The tugboat pulling the ship poses a striking resemblance to that of an airplane, so you can see how people would believe it.

Upon first glance, the crane of the tugboat bears a resemblance to the body and wing of a plane.

A grainy picture of the supposed “aircraft” was quickly uploaded by a journalist named Rafaleon Ortega to Twitter with the caption, “Picture of the plane in the sea, right now in Telde, Gran Canaria.”

Mere minutes later, the story proved to be false.

Government officials established that the image of the shipping vessel was mistaken for a plane by the Spanish airport authority, AENA.

Members of the public who had then seen the picture of the supposed “crashed plane” called emergency services, who took the calls very seriously.

A clear photo of the “plane crash,” a.k.a. the tugboat, was later posted to Twitter.

Fortunately this disaster was just a false alarm.

Ortega later tweeted that “this report has been reported as false despite the initial officials confirm. It seems to be a tugboat.”

Want the latest buzz before it goes viral?
Follow @YDailyBuzz on Twitter!