Pakistan Airlines advertisement shows plane flying over the Eiffel Tower
Pakistan’s flag carrier has drawn widespread criticism for airing an advertisement that shows a plane flying towards the Eiffel Tower.
The advertisement was aimed at promoting the resumption of Pakistan International Airlines flights to the French capital and was titled “Paris, we are coming today”.
Some social media users described the ad as being similar to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
“Is this an advertisement or a threat?” one user wrote on X. Another called for the company to “fire your marketing manager.”
The image has been viewed more than 21 million times on Twitter since it was published last week and has sparked an intense reaction.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered an investigation into the matter, while Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar has also criticized the advertisement, Pakistan’s Geo News reported.
9/11 attack The hijackers crashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Twin Towers of the Pentagon in Washington DC, killing about 3,000 people.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003.
Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda extremist network who planned the attacks, was killed by US troops in Pakistan in 2011.
Pakistani journalist Omar Qureshi said that the PIA advertisement left him “really speechless”.
“Did the airline management not investigate this?
He wrote on
The airline has not commented on the incident.
However, PIA is not without controversy.
Some
The airline was ridiculed after staff in 2017 Goat sacrificed to avoid bad luck After one of the country’s worst air disasters.
And in 2019, PIA caused a stir when it asked flight attendants to slim down or be grounded. Employees were told they had six months to lose “excess weight”.
