Pakistani politician praises pilot’s incredible skill in avoiding a crash… after mistaking footage from Grand Theft Auto for real life
- Opposition party leader Khurram Nawaz Gandapur tweeted the video on Friday
- He lauded the ‘miraculous save by the pilot’s presence of mind’ in his re-tweet
- Twitter users roasted his tweet, quipping ‘presence of mind or absence of mind?’
A pakistani politician has been ridiculed online after praising a ‘pilot’ for saving his airliner – in a clip of video game Grand Theft Auto 5.
‘Narrow escape of an aircraft which could have ended in a great disaster’ tweeted opposition Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) party secretary general Khurram Nawaz Gandapur on Friday.
‘Miraculous save by the pilot’s presence of mind.’
Pakistan Awami Tehreek party secretary general Khurram Nawaz Gandapur was ridiculed for this tweet, praising the ‘pilot’ in this clip of gameplay from video game Grand Theft Auto 5
Pakistan Awami Tehreek party secretary general Khurram Nawaz Gandapur
The video is very obviously a simulation, beginning with a ‘chase’ view of the Airbus A380 approaching a city skyline before turning towards an airport runway.
The perspective changes in jerks and jumps, and at one point zooms in to mere feet away from the plane’s tail.
Twitter users mercilessly roasted the hapless politician in comments on Gandapur’s tweet, which has since been deleted.
‘Couldn’t have been possible without the blessing of prophet (GTA5),’ wrote one, in an apparent dig at the PAT’s religious conservatism.
‘Lol… Presence of mind or absence of mind?’ wrote another.
The video’s author even weighed in, commenting: ‘Made this video three year back while i was doing one year diploma in animation. Its great to see people believing on it like a real’ (sic).
The Airbus A380 touches down while a tanker trundles across the runway in front of it, in this clip from the video game Grand Theft Auto 5
‘Hello, this is a simulation video. Such things aren’t possible in real life situations,’ another comment read.
‘If so the KLM & Panam crash would have been avoided. You should learn about lift,’ the tweeter added in a clear reference to the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster.
The video has some parallels with the 1977 tragedy, the worst accident in aviation history.
This still from the YouTube video of gameplay from Grand Theft Auto 5 shows an airliner coming in to land as a tanker rolls towards the runway
On that day 583 people died when a KLM Boeing 747 hit a Pan Am plane of the same model while taking off in poor visibility at Los Rodeos (now Tenerife North) airport.
Gandapur is not the first Pakistani public figure to make a fool of himself over new technology.
Last month Shaukat Ali Yousafzai, provincial health and information minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and a member of Presidnet Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, gave a live streamed press conference with a cat face filter turned on.
Provincial health and information minister Shaukat Ali Yousafzai during a webcast last month with the cat face filter accidentally turned on by his tech team