A Sunday Divaina of last month had an article in it saying that the British Airways had used two figures of Lord Buddha in a magazine for an advertisement.

As soon as I read this I sent a letter to B.A. attaching the above article too and expressing my disapprovement. I sent this letter through Mr. Ron Fuller an environmental engineer of the B.A. whom I became acquainted with at the inauguration ceremony of BA’s direct flight from UK to Sri Lanka which was held at the Gatwick Airport in 1995 where I was invited to sing a good luck song I composed.

Being a student of a Buddhist girls school, Visakha Vidyalaya, I was shocked at this ad and disappointed to learn from BA that two Buddhist organisations had cleared the publication. But I was greatly relieved when they informed me that the ad was being discontinued.

A copy of the letter which I received from BA is attached.
Udathari Seneviratne,
Colombo.

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Dear Miss Seneviratne

Ron Fuller from our Engineering department has forwarded onto us your letter regarding our advertisement which uses the image of Buddha.

We are very sorry that this has caused you distress, and are saddened that the research we carried out before publishing this advertisement did not alert us to the issues with its use. We researched this advertisement with customers in the UK and in three other countries, and we also specifically checked with two Buddhist organisations regarding the use of Buddha in an advertisement. The image and the ad were judged to be a very positive use and were welcomed by these groups.

However, we take all comments and complaints seriously and following yours and other letters we have dropped this advertisement from our current campaign and it will not be appearing further.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us on this matter, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely
Sue Zerk
Senior Manager Marketing Communications.