An ad from Pakistan International Airlines celebrating the return of its route from Islamabad to Paris has caused an outcry. The ad posted on X last week depicts a jet flying directly toward the Eiffel Tower, with the tagline "Paris, we're coming today." Social media users quickly noted that the imagery was reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks, the BBC reports, with one asking, "Is this an advertisement of a threat?" Ishaq Dar, Pakistan's finance minister, called the ad "stupidity" and said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had ordered an inquiry, reports the Guardian.
"Did the airline not vet this?" Pakistani journalist Omar Quraishi asked in a post on X. "Did the idiot who designed this graphic not see a PIA plane heading for the Eiffel Tower?" he asked. "Do they not know that PIA is an airline owned by a country often accused of supporting terrorism?" Other critics asked if the airline was still using the same graphic designer it had in 1979, when an ad depicted the shadow of an approaching aircraft on the World Trade Center. The airline resumed flights to Paris this month after the end of a European Union ban issued after it emerged that more than 30% of the country's commercial pilots had fake credentials. It is still banned from flying to the US and the UK. (More Pakistan International Airlines stories.)