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.
