Emergency services on Spain's Canary Islands have been left with red faces after falsely reporting a plane crash. Officials on the islands say staff mistook a large tugboat pulling a ship for a crashed airliner off Gran Canaria.
Reports of the phantom crash were carried on local radio. The alert was then reported by the international news agency Reuters and subsequently picked up by news organisations around the world.
The emergency services tweeted this out, which started claims of the supposed crash:
Control Canarias confirma caída al mar de avión a 2 millas costa #GRANCANARIA a la altura de Jinámar. Se desocnoce número de pasajeros
— 1-1-2 Canarias (@112canarias) March 27, 2014
A Spanish government spokesman told broadcaster TVE that the AENA airport authority "took seriously a warning of a possible plane crash".
However, the news was later denied by both AENA and the emergency service itself. The local government attributed the error to a misunderstanding by AENA.
