Critics have raised concerns over a recent Pakistan Airlines advertisement that seems to depict a plane flying towards the Eiffel Tower. The advert was released as the airline resumes its flights to Europe after a safety ban lasting four years.
Pakistan’s national carrier, which had been prohibited from operating flights to the UK, US, and EU since 2020, shared an image on social media featuring an airplane and the iconic monument framed by the French flag. The accompanying caption read: ‘Paris, we’re coming today.’
However, the advertisement faced significant backlash online, with many critics accusing Pakistan International Airline (PIA) of insensitivity for seemingly suggesting that the aircraft is on a collision course with the Parisian landmark.
Omar R Quraishi, a Pakistani PR expert and former adviser to politician Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, branded the campaign ‘completely tone deaf’.Â
He wrote on X: ‘Did the idiot who designed this graphic not see a PIA plane heading for the Eiffel Tower? One of Europe’s iconic landmarks. Do they not know about the 9/11 tragedy – which used planes to attack buildings? Did they not think that this would be perceived in similar fashion?’Â
Another baffled X user wrote: ‘Ahahha did no one learn product placement?! PIA, this doesn’t look like what you think it looks like!’.
One more added: ‘PIA designer selected this one over other designs. How bad [were those] other designs?’
A fourth said: ‘No way the official page thought this was a good idea. Fire your marketing department’.
Online critics blasted Pakistan International Airline’s (PIA) advert as ‘tone deaf’, claiming it appears to show the jet heading straight for the Paris landmark
Restrictions were imposed in 2020 after a PIA plane crashed in Karachi, killing 97 people
The backlash is a setback for the state-owned airline after the EU’s aviation safety agency lifted the four-year ban.Â
The curb on PIA was imposed in 2020 after 97 people died when a PIA plane crashed in Karachi in southern Pakistan.
Then-aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said an investigation into the crash found that nearly a third of Pakistani pilots had cheated on their pilot exams.
A government probe later concluded that the crash was caused by pilot error.
Out of 860 pilots currently licenced in Pakistan, investigators identified 262 who ‘did not take the exam themselves’ and ‘don’t have flying experience’, Khan said at the time.
PIA then grounded 150 of its pilots who were suspected of having cheated their way through their exam.Â
Abdullah Hafeez, a spokesman for Pakistan International Airlines, said: ‘We will make it sure that unqualified pilots never fly aircraft again’.
The ban caused a loss of nearly £123milllon a year in revenue for PIA, officials say.
The airline came under scrutiny in 2017 after admitting it overfilled a flight and allowed seven extra passengers on board to stand in the aisle.
PIA was also mocked after images circulated online of ground staff sacrificing a goat next to an aircraft just before take-off in a bid to ward off bad luck.Â
That followed a crash that killed 47 people in 2016. Â
Security personnel stand beside the wreckage of a plane at the site after a Pakistan International Airlines aircraft crashed in a residential area in Karachi, on May 24, 2020Â
But today, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed the flight resumption, saying it would help improve the airline’s image.
The flight from Islamabad to Paris was fully booked with more than 300 passengers, the airline said.
Defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif inaugurated the twice-a-week flights to Paris and vowed that PIA will expand its operations to other European countries soon.
Mr Asif said in a speech that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency had imposed the ban on PIA’s operations to Europe because of an ‘irresponsible statement’ by a former aviation minister.
Also on Friday, the first international flight from Gwadar, a new airport in southwestern Pakistan, departed for Muscat, government officials said.
The Chinese-funded airport was inaugurated by Chinese premier Li Qiang in October.
The airport, Pakistan’s largest, is located in restive southwestern Balochistan province and is part of a massive investment by Beijing that links a deep seaport and airport on the Arabian Sea by road with China.
