{"id":215057,"date":"2025-01-14T16:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/14\/pakistan-orders-inquiry-after-complaints-that-airline-ad-evoked-9-11\/"},"modified":"2025-01-14T16:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:37:10","slug":"pakistan-orders-inquiry-after-complaints-that-airline-ad-evoked-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/14\/pakistan-orders-inquiry-after-complaints-that-airline-ad-evoked-9-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan Orders Inquiry After Complaints That Airline Ad Evoked 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/14\/multimedia\/14pakistan-1-gljh\/14pakistan-1-gljh-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Pakistan Orders Inquiry After Complaints That Airline Ad Evoked 9\/11\" title=\"Pakistan Orders Inquiry After Complaints That Airline Ad Evoked 9\/11\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Pakistan\u2019s prime minister on Tuesday ordered an investigation into how the country\u2019s national airline approved an advertisement with an illustration that many on social media said was uncomfortably similar to imagery from Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The advertisement, by the state-run Pakistan International Airlines, or PIA, was meant to be a celebratory announcement that it was resuming flights to Paris.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the ad \u2014 featuring an image of an aircraft pointed toward the Eiffel Tower with the caption \u201cParis, we\u2019re coming today\u201d \u2014 drew swift condemnation after its release late last week. A <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Official_PIA\/status\/1877555588533485884\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">post by the airline<\/a> on X that showed the image has been viewed more than 21 million times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cPakistan air needs a new graphic designer,\u201d Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and author, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@ianbremmer\/post\/DEpvbmcIFKo\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">wrote on Threads<\/a>, a social network.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Omar R. Quraishi, a newspaper columnist, said the advertisement had left him speechless. \u201cDo they not know about the 9\/11 tragedy \u2014 which used planes to attack buildings,\u201d Mr. Quraishi <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/omar_quraishi\/status\/1877711243558969408\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Pakistan has some connections to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the attacks, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The country\u2019s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, said during a session of Parliament that the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had asked for an inquiry into how the advertisement had cleared internal airline approvals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The outcry over the ad is the latest setback for PIA, which has been battling financial losses and hurdles in the government\u2019s desperate efforts to privatize the airline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In November, the push for <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nation.com.pk\/01-Nov-2024\/pia-privatisation-hits-a-major-turbulence\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">privatization stalled<\/a> when the sole bidder offered less than 12 percent of the government\u2019s minimum sale price of about $300 million.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Controversy is familiar territory for PIA. In 2017, the airline made international headlines when ground crew members <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/01\/18\/world\/what-in-the-world\/pakistan-airport-goat-sacrifice.html\" title=\"\">sacrificed a goat<\/a> on the tarmac for good luck.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It has also faced questions over its safety standards, with the United States and Britain barring its planes from flying there. It resumed flights to Paris after the European Union\u2019s aviation safety agency lifted <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/07\/01\/world\/asia\/pakistan-airline-european-union.html\" title=\"\">a four-year ban<\/a> on the airline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/14\/world\/asia\/pakistan-airlines-ad-eiffel-tower-paris.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pakistan\u2019s prime minister on Tuesday ordered an investigation into how the country\u2019s national airline approved an advertisement with an illustration that many on social media said was uncomfortably similar to imagery from Sept. 11, 2001. The advertisement, by the state-run Pakistan International Airlines, or PIA, was meant to be a celebratory announcement that it was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/14\/multimedia\/14pakistan-1-gljh\/14pakistan-1-gljh-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169206,6418,169293,18450,169752,169754,6903,5606,264,169753,148503,56796,108664],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215059,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215057\/revisions\/215059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}