Pakistan’s prime minister has ordered an investigation after the country’s national airline released an advert that drew accusations that it evoked imagery of the 9/11 attacks.
The advert was released by Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) last week to celebrate the resumption of flights to Paris, which had been suspended for four years over safety concerns about its pilots.
— PIA (@Official_PIA) January 10, 2025
But the PR campaign, which depicted a plane headed towards the Eiffel Tower with the tagline “Paris, we’re coming today”, was soon criticised for an uncomfortable resemblance to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, when planes struck the twin towers in New York.
Pakistani’s finance minister, Ishaq Dar, called the advert “stupidity” and confirmed that the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had directed a probe into the scandal. “The prime minister has directed [authorities] to investigate who conceived this ad,” Dar told a parliamentary session this week.
Omar Quraishi, a former political media adviser, said on X that he was “truly speechless” that the advert had been approved. “Did the airline management not vet this?” he said.
PIA has been approached for comment. The airline has not responded to the controversy since releasing the ads on X on 10 January.
Pakistan is not without its links to the September 11 bombings. Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaida who carried out the attacks, was found to have been hiding in Pakistan before being killed by US forces in 2011.
The advert is just one of several missteps taken by PIA. The airline was banned by the EU regulator for over four years after it emerged that nearly a third of its pilots had cheated in their exams and failed to follow safety procedures. It remains banned by the UK and the United States.
In 2017, the company attracted scandal after PIA staff members sacrificed a goat on the tarmac for good luck.
