Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has finally made its return to the European Union, over four years after the airline was banned. The company is certainly making headlines for its return, but not for the reason you’d expect…
Pakistan International Airlines resumes European Union flights
In July 2020, the European Union Air Safety Agency (EASA) banned Pakistan International Airlines from flying to European Union destinations.
The ban came following an Airbus A320 crash from the airline in May 2020, which killed nearly 100 people. It was blamed primarily on pilot error. What ultimately contributed to the airline to be banned from the European Union was a statement by the country’s Minister for Aviation, who claimed that 262 of the 860 airline pilots in the country had “fake” licenses, including 150 pilots at the national carrier.
Obviously that was incredibly alarming, and is what caused the European Union to take action. Officials in Pakistan later called this statement irresponsible, suggesting that there may have instead just been some testing discrepancies.
After a ban of well over four years, the airline finally made its return to the European Union yesterday. As of January 10, 2025, the airline resumed twice weekly flights between Islamabad (ISB) and Paris (CDG), using Boeing 777s.
The inaugural flight was fully booked, with over 300 passengers, according to the airline. More European Union flights are expected to be added soon, and the country’s Prime Minister hopes that this resumption will help improve the national carrier’s image.
The airline claims that not being able to fly to the European Union caused the airline to lose nearly $150 million in revenue per year. However, given the carrier’s massive losses (the airline has lost $3.6 billion over the past couple of decades), there’s a major difference between lost revenue and lost profits. Odds are that this ban helped PIA’s bottom line.
Pakistan International Airlines’ Paris return goes viral
If any publicity is good publicity, then the social media team at Pakistan International Airlines deserves a big raise. To celebrate the return to the European Union, the airline posted a picture on social media, with the caption “Paris, We’re Coming Today.” The picture shows a PIA 777 flying straight for the Eiffel Tower.
The picture has now been viewed well over 16 million times on Twitter/X alone, and more on other platforms.
I’m not sure whether to think the person behind this ad is a genius or a complete idiot. Talk about a lot of publicity on the cheap. At the same time, having a plane flying straight for a landmark isn’t exactly a great look. Couldn’t they have pointed the aircraft in the other direction, and maybe put it a bit higher up? It probably wouldn’t have gotten the same level of attention then, though…
This reminds me of the 1979 ad that the airline had, where it showed a plane flying straight for the World Trade Center. Of course this was well before the horrible attacks of September 11, 2001, though still, one has to wonder what they were thinking…
Bottom line
Pakistan International Airlines was banned from the European Union in July 2020, and has finally made its comeback, as of January 2025. The airline has resumed flights between Islamabad and Paris, and plans to add more destinations soon.
The airline has gotten more than its fair share of publicity from this service resumption, thanks to a poorly thought out social media post (or maybe really well thought out post, depending on how you look at it).
What do you make of PIA’s return to the European Union, and social media post?
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