Pakistan Airlines’ Eiffel Tower Ad Evokes 9/11 Memories, Shehbaz Sharif Orders Probe

Bhubaneswar: A social media post by Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) created a stir for its resemblance to the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks in New York, prompting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to order a probe.

The advertisement post on X meant to celebrate the resumption of flights to Paris after a four-year hiatus showed an aircraft heading towards the Eiffel Tower with the caption, “Paris, we’re coming today” and amassed over 21.2 million views.

Social media users  compared the visual to the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, where hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, killing 3,000 people.

Omar R. Quraishi, a newspaper columnist, said the advertisement had left him speechless. “Do they not know about the 9/11 tragedy — which used planes to attack buildings,” he wrote on X.

Another user asked if “this is a threat?”.

While several on X asked for the post to be deleted, another commented: “Let’s be honest, without the terrible design of their post, none of us would even know that PIA is flying to Paris now.”

Following the backlash, Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar condemned the post while addressing the upper house of parliament. “The Prime Minister has directed [authorities] to investigate who conceived this ad. It is stupidity,” he confirmed, while expressing concerns over the caption accompanying the image.

The 9/11 attacks planned by al-Qaeda from Afghanistan.has a Pakistan connection. While Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003, Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011.