Pakistan’s prime minister on Tuesday ordered an investigation into how the country’s 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 resuming flights to Paris.
But the ad — featuring an image of an aircraft pointed toward the Eiffel Tower with the caption “Paris, we’re coming today” — drew swift condemnation after its release late last week. A post by the airline on X that showed the image has been viewed more than 21 million times.
“Pakistan air needs a new graphic designer,” Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and author, wrote on Threads, a social network.
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,” Mr. Quraishi wrote on X.
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.
The country’s 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.
The outcry over the ad is the latest setback for PIA, which has been battling financial losses and hurdles in the government’s desperate efforts to privatize the airline.
In November, the push for privatization stalled when the sole bidder offered less than 12 percent of the government’s minimum sale price of about $300 million.
Controversy is familiar territory for PIA. In 2017, the airline made international headlines when ground crew members sacrificed a goat on the tarmac for good luck.
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’s aviation safety agency lifted a four-year ban on the airline.
