Muslim YouTube star kicked off Delta flight for speaking Arabic

New Delhi, Dec 22: A YouTube star known for filming elaborate hoaxes was escorted off a Delta flight on Wednesday morning after he claimed that other passengers complained when they heard him speaking in Arabic.

Adam Saleh, a 23-year-old YouTube star from New York, posted multiple videos to Twitter and Periscope on Tuesday, showing himself being escorted from a plane by Delta flight attendants.

Saleh said in the videos that after passengers heard him speaking Arabic, they “felt uncomfortable” and called flight attendants. However, while it is clear that he was removed from the flight at London's Heathrow airport, the circumstances leading up to the video – retweeted more than 644,000 times – are not known and cannot be verified.

Saleh has created videos in the past that involved staged scenes on airplanes and with actors playing authority figures.

Saleh was on a flight from London to New York with his friend Slim Albaher, another YouTube personality, who was also escorted off the plane.

“They kicked us off the plane because a lady, because a lot of people felt uncomfortable,” Saleh said. “Delta Air Lines just kicked us out for speaking Arabic.”

Saleh told the Guardian that he was calling his mother before his flight from Heathrow on Wednesday morning.

“Usually before I take off I speak to my mom,” he said. “My mom is 66 years old and she only speaks Arabic, so I was speaking to her in Arabic – it was a 30-second phone call.”

After the phone call, he said, he was speaking with Albaher in Arabic and in English when “this lady that was sitting maybe four seats ahead of us turns around and says:Oh my, you need to speak English, I'm feeling very uncomfortable.'” Saleh said after another passenger defended the two, an older man the woman was travelling with also got involved.

According to Saleh, he said: “Chuck them off the f-ing plane!” before other men stood up and called for the captain.

The woman who originally complained told the captain: “We feel uncomfortable – something happened in Germany. If they don't leave, I leave,” according to Saleh.

Saleh said the captain then asked to speak to them outside, which is when he started filming.

Saleh, who has millions of followers subscribed to his YouTube channels, posted numerous times from an airport in London where he said Delta had asked them to wait. His latest tweet said they had been rebooked on another flight to New York with a different airline after going through the security check a second time.

Saleh is known for orchestrating pranks in his YouTube videos. He recently created a video that appeared to show himself traveling from Melbourne to Sydney inside a suitcase in the plane's baggage hold. The airline later said that Saleh had sat in a regular seat on the flight and that travelling via the baggage section would have been impossible.

Saleh and a colleague admitted that another video was exaggerated after it went viral and its authenticity was questioned. The 2014 video appeared to show a New York police officer intervening in an argument when the Muslim men wore “cultural clothing” but ignoring the same men when they were dressed in T-shirts and jeans. Saleh later said the video was a “dramatization of previous events that occurred with us in our traditional clothing while filming in NYC”.

When asked about his previous hoaxes, Saleh defended the authenticity of Wednesday's videos.

“You can exactly see in the video a person sticking a middle finger up at the back, you see a guy defending us. The captain was quiet when I said what had happened,” he told the Guardian. “We wouldn't be here joking around.”

One passenger, who spoke to BuzzFeed News, said he had talked to five passengers who witnessed Saleh's behavior. They questioned whether he had really made a telephone call. Passenger Marvin Avilez also said that witnesses described Saleh's friend prompting him to say Arabic words and to pump his fists in the air, which apparently led to an argument with a female passenger.

In the video, several passengers jeered at him as he recorded the incident. Saleh said a few passengers came to his defense. One man can be heard criticizing the flight attendants.

“I spoke to my mom, I told her I'm going to see you in six to seven hours,” he said. “Now everything is literally upside down.”

In later videos, Saleh said that the flight attendants told him and Albaher they were “too loud” and that they asked to speak to them outside the plane.

“All the racist people in there, they were like:We feel uncomfortable,' but because there were like 20 of those racist people, the captain came and he kicked us out,” he said. “I'm not letting this slide … They were screaming at us like we were terrorists.”

Delta released a statement saying “two customers” had been removed from a flight and later rebooked after “a disturbance in the cabin resulted in more than 20 customers expressing their discomfort”.

The airline later said, after collecting statements from passengers, that the pair “sought to disrupt the cabin with provocative behavior, including shouting”.

“This type of conduct is not welcome on any Delta flight. While one, according to media reports, is a known prankster who was video recorded and encouraged by his traveling companion, what is paramount to Delta is the safety and comfort of our passengers and employees. It is clear these individuals sought to violate that priority.”

In a statement, London's Metropolitan police said they were called to Heathrow around 11am, “after two passengers were removed from a plane by crew at Heathrow Airport.

“Officers attended and the passengers were escorted to the terminal where they were assisted with making alternative travel arrangements.

“They were not arrested and no offences were disclosed.”

Saleh later tweeted: “Yes, we're pranksters and it sounds like the boy who cried wolf but today you can clearly see it's as real as it gets.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said that in the last year it had received nearly a dozen reports of Muslim travelers, or travelers who were perceived to be Muslim, being questioned or removed from flights after complaints.

Italian economist Guido Menzio was questioned during a domestic flight when a passenger complained that a differential equation he was working on made her suspicious. Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, a student, was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight and questioned by the FBI in April after a passenger heard him speaking in Arabic to his uncle, he said.

We got kicked out of a @Delta airplane because I spoke Arabic to my mom on the phone and with my friend slim... WTFFFFFFFF please spread pic.twitter.com/P5dQCE0qos

— Adam Saleh (@omgAdamSaleh) December 21, 2016