Two commercial airline giants, Airbus and Boeing, are publicly bickering, accusing each other of making false statements about the performance of their planes.

The war of words escalated with an Airbus ad showing a Boeing jet nose grotesquely elongated to resemble Pinocchio’s (left photo), which grew famously longer with each fib he told.

The ad asserts that Boeing is stretching the truth to tout its aircraft. Boeing says it stands by its claims about the superiority of its 737 Max 8 over the Airbus 320Neo and its 747-8 over Airbus’ A380.

This isn’t the first time that Pinocchio has appeared in aviation ads.

Irish low-cost airline Ryanair took on EasyJet in 2010 ads that portrayed EasyJet’s CEO as the long-nosed storybook character fibbing about his airline’s punctuality record.

EasyJet took that one to court, and Ryanair was fined with the CEO forced to make a public apology.
 

— Gay Nagle Myers