Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) was recently unbanned from the European Union, with the first route resumption being between Islamabad (ISB) and Paris (CDG). Well, Pakistan’s government is now reportedly investigating the airline, over what might be one of the most widely seen airline social media posts ever…
Pakistan’s Prime Minister calls PIA ad “stupid”
When PIA resumed nonstop flights to Paris, the airline shared an attention grabbing post on social media, depicting a PIA Boeing 777 flying straight for the Eiffel Tower, with the caption “Paris, We’re Coming Today.” For better or worse, this certainly created a lot of publicity surrounding the carrier’s return to Paris.
However, it seems that Pakistan’s government isn’t in the “any publicity is good publicity” camp. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has now ordered an investigation into the controversial social media post, including determining who approved the advertisement. He has reportedly called the ad “an act of stupidity.”
What made this even worse is that back in 1979, PIA had an advertisement depicting a plane flying straight for New York’s World Trade Center. Admittedly at the time, that might not have seemed very controversial, but you’d think that a lesson would’ve been learned there in hindsight.
My take on this controversial PIA flight ad
The way I see it, there are two possible explanations for this ad.
One explanation is that PIA’s social media department consists of one or two people, with very basic photoshop skills. Like, they found little clip art of a plane and the Eiffel Tower, and they couldn’t figure out how to point the plane in the other direction. So they put the airplane and Eiffel Tower “art” into the post, and called it a day, without putting much further thought into it.
The other explanation is that the people behind this ad knew exactly what they were doing, and took the “any publicity is good publicity” approach. Like, if they just posted a random picture on Twitter/X, it wouldn’t have gotten much visibility. Meanwhile with the post they published, they got a lot more eyeballs on what’s ultimately an important development for the airline.
Personally I think the former explanation is the most likely, and that this came down to incompetence rather than some brilliant Ryanair-esque social media strategy. That being said, in all honesty, I think the government shouldn’t take things so seriously here.
I think this ad going viral was a net positive for the airline, as it created a lot of publicity surrounding the carrier’s return to the European Union, when it would’ve otherwise gotten very little attention. And this didn’t actually harm the carrier’s reputation. I mean, we’re talking about an airline where many of the pilots were found to have fake licenses, so…
Bottom line
Pakistan’s Prime Minister has ordered an investigation into the national carrier over a recent ad celebrating the carrier’s return to Paris. This depicted a 777 flying toward the Eiffel Tower and went viral, being viewed well over 20 million times. The Prime Minister has called the ad “an act of stupidity,” and wants to determine who approved this ad.
What do you make of Pakistan’s government investigating PIA over this Paris flight ad?
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