Pakistan Airlines comes under fire for ‘tone deaf’ advert ‘showing jet flying into the Eiffel Tower’ – as it resumes Europe flights after four-year safety ban

A Pakistan Airlines advertisement has come under fire for appearing to show a plane flying into the Eiffel Tower as the company resumes its European flights after a four-year safety ban.

Pakistan’s national carrier, which was banned from flying to Britain, the US and the EU in 2020, posted an image on social media of a plane and the monument with the French flag, alongside the caption: ‘Paris, we’ll come today.’

But online critics have slammed the Pakistan International Airline (PIA) ad, claiming it makes it look like the plane is heading straight for the Paris landmark.

Omar R Quraishi, a Pakistani PR expert and former adviser to politician Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, called the campaign “completely tone deaf.”

He wrote on One of Europe’s iconic landmarks. Don’t they know about the tragedy of September 11, where planes were used to attack buildings? Didn’t they think this would be taken in a similar way?’

Another baffled X-user wrote: ‘Ahahha, didn’t anyone learn product placement?! PIA, this doesn’t look like what you think it looks like!’.

Another added: ‘PIA designer chose this one over other designs. How bad [were those] other designs?’

A fourth said: ‘The official page didn’t think this was a good idea at all. Fire your marketing department’.

Restrictions were imposed in 2020 after a PIA plane crashed in Karachi, killing 97 people

The response is a setback for the state-owned airline after the EU Aviation Safety Agency lifted the four-year ban.

The restriction on PIA was imposed in 2020 after 97 people were killed when a PIA plane crashed in Karachi, southern Pakistan.

Then-Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said an investigation into the crash found that almost a third of Pakistani pilots had cheated in their flying tests.

A government investigation later concluded that the crash was caused by pilot error.

Of the 860 pilots currently licensed in Pakistan, investigators have identified 262 who “did not take the exam themselves” and “have no flying experience,” Khan said at the time.

PIA subsequently grounded 150 pilots suspected of cheating in their exams.

Abdullah Hafeez, a spokesman for Pakistan International Airlines, said: “We will ensure that unqualified pilots never fly aircraft again.”

The ban caused a loss of almost £123 million a year in revenue for PIA, officials say.

The airline came under scrutiny in 2017 after admitting it overfilled a flight and allowed seven additional passengers on board to stand in the aisle.

PIA was also mocked after images circulated online of ground crews sacrificing a goat next to a plane just before takeoff in a bid to avert bad luck.

That followed a crash that killed 47 people in 2016.

Security personnel stand next to the wreckage of an aircraft at the site after a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed in a residential area in Karachi on May 24, 2020

But today Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed the resumption of flights, 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.

Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif inaugurated the twice-weekly flights to Paris and promised that PIA will soon expand its operations to other European countries.

Mr Asif said in a speech that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency had imposed the ban on PIA’s operations to Europe due to an “irresponsible statement” by a former aviation minister.

Also on Friday, the first international flight took off from Gwadar, a new airport in southwestern Pakistan, 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 the restive southwestern province of Balochistan and is part of a massive investment by Beijing that will connect a deep-sea port and airport on the Arabian Sea to China by road.