A commercial showing a plane moving towards the Eiffel Tower was not meant to invoke memories of the September 11 attacks, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) explained Thursday.
On January 10, the advertisement was posted on X, signaling the airline’s return to flights to EU locations following a four-year ban. The image featured a plane flying over the French flag, and the caption said ”we are coming today”
After the tweet received a lot of negative feedback on social media, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif demanded an investigation. Later, Ishaq Dar, the deputy prime minister, called the advertisement “stupidity.”
PIA spokesperson Abdullah Hafeez expressed surprise at the criticism and described the advertisement as a celebration of the airline’s return to Europe.
Hafeez emphasized that there was no aim to insult and expressed regret to anyone who was offended by the commercial. He went on to say that the Eiffel Tower was highlighted due to its widespread awareness.
In June 2020, a month after one of its Airbus A-320s crashed into a Karachi street, killing about 100 people, PIA was prohibited from operating flights to the US, UK, and EU.
After the pilots and air traffic control blamed the accident on human error, it was claimed that over one-third of the pilots’ licenses were fraudulent or questionable.
During a journey from the far north to Islamabad in 2016, a PIA plane’s two turboprop engines failed, causing it to explode into flames, killing over 40 people.
Although the European Union Aviation Safety Agency declared in November that the ban had been removed, it is still prohibited from traveling to the US and the UK.
It claimed to have “re-established sufficient confidence” in the supervision powers of the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority at the time.
