Didn’t understand the mockery: was the pilot really fired when he refused to spray “chemtrails”?

He himself realized that it was a lie

At the end of October, this news began to spread in Lithuania as well. “There are still people who think…” commented one Facebook user who shared a report about this pilot. Her post was deletedbut put archived a copy.

“The world’s first pilot was fired for refusing to turn on the chemtrails,” reported another user of this social network. True, she is added: “Faktchek (from English fact-check – fact-checking article – ed. past.) says – weak (falsehood – ed. post.).”

The woman shared the same in the comments by video with the Russian comment that “the world’s first pilot who refused to turn on chemtrails was fired.”

Reportage actively shared and more Russian speakers various social networks users. They explained the same thing – that the pilot refused to spray “chemtrails”, which is why he lost his job last year, and then appealed this decision to the court in Nuremberg. The post is accompanied by comments such as “genocide”, referring to the toxic chemicals allegedly sprayed from the planes.

Although the video itself, which is being shared on social media, is real, it presents a fictional situation. The pilot mentioned in the report does not exist, so he was not supposed to spray any substances and was not fired for refusing to do so.

Paid a huge fine?

Search the Internet by a few keywords takes you to the same video posted on YouTube. The almost two-and-a-half-minute report was viewed more than 470,000 times in one and a half months. times.

It tells the story of Christoph W., now a former Lufthansa pilot, who was allegedly fired after noticing that he had not activated a special device to spray chemtrails on a flight from Frankfurt to Barcelona.

The experienced pilot claimed to have forgotten, but an internal investigation found that there had been more than 30 similar incidents of inattention.

“I became a pilot because I just like flying, not putting chemicals on people and suppressing their critical thinking,” he told reporters told 36-year-old man. “What the employer demanded of me was clearly illegal.”

Explaining the circumstances of the dismissal, the airline’s lawyer told the court that such actions had resulted in huge costs – hundreds of millions of fines had to be paid to the “secret world government”.

Although the video looks like a regular TV report – filmed with high quality, interviewed not only by the pilot, but also by an expert, it is not real – there was no such story.

Pilot Christoph W. is not available

The report was published on September 30. Germany of the satirical website Der Postillon in the channel. This website publishes satirical articles written in the style of newspaper articles and agency messages.

The story of Christoph W. was described and on the website itselfbut not in recent weeks, but last October. It seems that chemtrail conspiracy theorists saw it a year ago and took notice when the video was released.

The logo of the website Der Postillon can be seen in the upper right corner of the frame, so its source is obvious.

In the Frequently Asked Questions section of the page indicated: “Everything published in Der Postillon is satire, and therefore a blatant lie.” All characters appearing are fictitious, similarities to living people are purely coincidental.” Therefore, it is suggested not to take the information published here at face value.

in 2008 who founded the website Stefan Sichermann to the AFP news agency deniedthat the pilot refused to spray “chemtrails” and was fired.

The reports about the allegedly unemployed pilot were denied not only AFPbut also the German News Agency dpaa fact-checking website „Correctiv“.

Sakartwell fact-checking website Myth Detector with facial recognition software Pimeyes found outthat the “pilot” is one of the founders and editors of Der Postillon Philippas Feldhusenas.

There is only a grain of truth

“Chemtrails” do not exist. It’s just one of the most popular conspiracy theories. Its believers explain that the governments of the United States and other countries intentionally spray toxic chemicals or biological agents (bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc.) into the air in order to destroy or control humanity and influence the weather.

This is the name given to the white streaks behind flying planes, which are actually from the engines hot air erupted and frozen into ice crystals at high altitude and humidity.

In 2016, this theory analyzed by 77 scientists studying the atmosphere. The experts’ conclusion was unanimous: there is no evidence of a secret global climate control program.

This conspiracy theory was recently refuted by meteorologist Gytis Valaika, who previously wrote about these streaks left by airplanes in the sky.

“You’ll almost always see them when an atmospheric front is approaching. The moisture from the atmospheric front first reaches the upper layers of the atmosphere, so we begin to see cirrus clouds in the sky, which look like feathers or like a whitish shell of the sky (ie, stratus cirrus clouds, cirrostratus).

It is then, with increased humidity, that airplane condensation bands last much longer than usual. The reason is that the atmospheric layer at that height is moist, so the formed water vapor (or small ice crystals) does not evaporate and disappear”, – he said a few weeks ago wrote Facebook page “Weather and climate in Lithuania”.

According to G. Valaika, sometimes it happens that one plane leaves a trace, and the other does not. The most common reason for this is that planes fly at different altitudes (the difference can be determined by a height difference of even 100-200 meters).

“Even if the sky looks perfectly clear, believe me, there are many different atmospheric layers in the atmosphere with different characteristics (different winds and their directions, temperature, humidity, etc.). Such a feature of the atmosphere is revealed by the daily meteorological radiosonding, during which all the main indicators are measured up to ~30 km height,” he said.

According to the meteorologist, airplanes pollute the atmosphere with burning aviation fuel. Condensation trails left by airplanes are not poison, but they sometimes form longer-lasting clouds homogenized (lat. to create human activity).

“They really reflect a part of the Sun’s radiation (just like any clouds), so this is where all those conspiratorial statements about deliberately created climate change, geoengineering using airplanes, etc. come from,” G. Valaika explained. “So conspiracy theories have a grain of truth, but most of what they say is a jumble of misstatements and interpretations.”

15min verdict: satire. It is not true that the German pilot was fired for refusing to spray chemtrails. This news was published on a satirical website that publishes purely fictional “news”. Chemtrails themselves are a conspiracy theory.

The publication was prepared in 15 minutes in partnership with Metait aims to stop the spread of misleading news on the social network. More about the program and its rules – here.