Pakistan’s flag provider has drawn widespread criticism for placing out an commercial that confirmed a aircraft flying in direction of the Eiffel Tower.
The advert was meant to advertise the resumption of Pakistan Worldwide Airways’ flights to the French capital and had the caption “Paris, we’re coming immediately”.
Some social media customers famous the advert’s resemblance to the terrorist assaults within the US on 11 September 2001.
“Is that this an commercial or a risk?” one person wrote on X. One other referred to as for the corporate to “hearth your advertising supervisor”.
The picture has been seen greater than 21 million occasions on X because it was revealed final week and has drawn swift backlash.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered an investigation into the matter, whereas Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar has additionally criticised the advert, Pakistan’s Geo Information reported.
The 9/11 attacks noticed hijackers crash passenger jets into the dual towers of the World Commerce Heart in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, killing practically 3,000 individuals.
The alleged mastermind of the assaults, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003.
Osama bin Laden, the chief of the al-Qaeda extremist community which deliberate the assaults, was killed by US troops in Pakistan in 2011.
Pakistani journalist Omar Quraishi stated PIA’s advert left him “really speechless”.
“Did the airline administration not vet this?
“Do they not know in regards to the 9/11 tragedy – which used planes to assault buildings? Did they not suppose that this may be perceived in related vogue,” he wrote on X.
The airline has not commented on the incident.
The PIA, nevertheless, is not any stranger to controversy.
Some X customers identified that in 1979, the airline revealed an commercial exhibiting a passenger jet’s shadow over the dual towers.
In 2017, the airline was mocked after employees sacrificed a goat to ward off bad luck following one of many nation’s worst air disasters.
And in 2019, PIA brought about a stir when it instructed flight attendants to slim down or get grounded. Workers have been instructed they’d had six months to shed “extra weight”.
