A YouTube star known for pranks and hoaxing said he was removed from a Delta Air Lines flight after he spoke in Arabic on the phone.
Adam Saleh described the incident on Delta Flight 1 from London Heathrow Airport to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport via tweets and videos on twitter saying, “We got kicked out of a @Delta airplane because I spoke Arabic to my mom on the phone.”
Saleh was traveling with friend Slim Albaher who is also a YouTube personality, Saleh started videotaping from the plane as workers approached them. In another tweet, Saleh called for a boycott of Delta.
Delta said Wednesday that two customers were removed from the flight and later rebooked “after a disturbance in the cabin resulted in more than 20 customers expressing their discomfort.” Some passengers waved and shouted “bye” from their seats.
Saleh later tweeted that he was “on another flight with a different airline heading to NYC after being checked for 30 minutes.”
Two years ago, Saleh apologized for a “re-enactment” of Islamophobia and racial profiling in a video, which triggered media coverage and reactions by some who took it was a real incident.
“The issue of airline profiling of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims is of great concern to us,” said Council on American-Islamic Relations spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. “There have been fairly regular reports of airline profiling to our offices around the country. … We just aren’t sure at this point if this incident is representative of that phenomenon.”
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