THY's Super Bowl ad looks to inspire people who never traveled abroad

Turkey's flag carrier Turkish Airlines on Sunday released its ad for the 2020 Super Bowl commercial in which they compared NASA's Apollo 11 moon landing to a flight with the company, inspiring people to travel abroad.

The 100-second ad aimed to inspire millions of people who had never traveled abroad, by associating traveling for the first time abroad with landing on the moon. The ad points out that despite mankind's first trip to the moon in 1969, billions of people have not stepped onboard an aircraft more than 50 years later.

The airline company had previously shared the ad's teaser with a caption that read, "Earth is here waiting to be reached."

The ad by THY revolves around three unidentified people who had never been able to travel abroad and were sent on their first-ever trip by the airline. The passengers pack their bags for a trip in a place that looks like a space station but actually is Istanbul's new mega airport. The carrier specifically chose three ad stars as a callback to the three NASA astronauts aboard 1969's Apollo 11, the first mission to land a human on the moon. Those astronauts were Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin.

The ad concludes with a narrator uttering, "Today we stand before a historic event. No words can describe this. Earth is here waiting to be reached."

The ad is called #StepOnEarth, and it makes the same point that Turkish Airlines makes with so many of their ads – the airline flies to more countries than any other airline in the world. Turkish Airlines has been an active commercial participant in the Super Bowl for at least the last five years, unlike any other airline. A 30-second ad in the Super Bowl costs a whopping $5.6 million.