Pakistan’s national airline has attracted widespread criticism for broadcasting an advertisement showing a plane flying towards the Eiffel Tower.
The advertisement aimed to promote the resumption of Pakistan International Airlines flights to the French capital and carried the caption “Paris, we are arriving today”.
Some social media users noted the ad’s resemblance to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
“Is this an advertisement or a threat? one user wrote about X. Another called on the company to “fire your marketing manager.”
The image has been viewed more than 21 million times on X since its publication last week and has sparked strong reactions.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered an investigation into the matter, while Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar also criticized the ad, Pakistani newspaper Geo News reported.
The September 11 attacks saw hijackers crash airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, killing nearly 3,000 people.
The alleged mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003.
Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda extremist network who planned the attacks, was killed by American troops in Pakistan in 2011.
Pakistani journalist Omar Quraishi said the PIA ad left him “truly speechless”.
“Has the airline management not looked into this?
“Don’t they know about the tragedy of 9/11 where planes attacked buildings? Didn’t they think it would be seen the same way,” he wrote on X.
The airline has not commented on the incident.
The PIA, however, is no stranger to controversy.
Some X users pointed out that in 1979, the airline released an advertisement showing the shadow of an airliner above the Twin Towers.
In 2017, the airline was mocked after staff sacrificed a goat to ward off bad luck following one of the country’s worst air disasters.
And in 2019, PIA caused a stir by asking flight attendants to lose weight or get grounded. Staff were told they had six months to lose “the excess weight”.
