American YouTube personality Adam Saleh has elaborated on his claims that Delta kicked him off an aeroplane “for speaking Arabic”.
Saleh, 22, posted a video on social media on Wednesday saying passengers heard him speaking in Arabic and “felt uncomfortable and called flight attendants”.
He was on a flight from London to New York with his friend Slim Al Baher, another YouTube personality, who was also escorted off the plane.
Saleh and Al Baher have since created a seven-minute video explaining the incident.
Saleh claims a phone conversation with his mother, followed by a conversation with Al Baher — both in Arabic — prompted the incident.
Saleh alleges a woman four seats in front of him turned to them and said: “Can you please speak English? I feel really uncomfortable.” The statement was directed to Al Baher, but he felt “paralysed”, prompting Saleh to speak up on his behalf. Saleh also claims a man stood up and said, “Chuck them off the [expletive] plane.”
“You guys are racists. I spoke a different language and you say you feel uncomfortable. I can’t believe my eyes. We spoke a different language and now there are six white people against us bearded men,” said Saleh in the original video, which was retweeted more than 700 thousand times.
It spurred conflicted discussions and the hashtag #BoycottDelta on Twitter.
Some users pointed towards Delta’s history with racism. This includes an incident when Delta did not believe that a black woman was a doctor who could help an unconscious passenger; an incident when Delta mistook a Sikh woman’s breast pump for a bomb; and an incident when Delta removed a Pakistani-American couple from a flight because the woman was on the phone while her husband was ‘sweating’.
Others were sceptical of Saleh’s accusations due to his reputation of being a YouTube prankster. He had recently conducted a prank on an aeroplane. Two years ago, Saleh uploaded a video dubbed Racial Profiling Experiment, which he later admitted was fake.
In the hidden-camera style clip, Saleh and a friend pretended to be profiled by the police while dressed in traditional Middle Eastern attire. The video caused backlash before Saleh confessed it was staged.
After an hours-long delay at Heathrow Airport involving more security checks, Saleh said he was finally able to board a flight to New York with a different airline and would head straight to see his lawyer.
In a statement, Delta claimed that two customers were removed from the plane after “more than 20 customers” complained. They later posted an updated statement.
“Based on the information collected to date, it appears the customers who were removed sought to disrupt the cabin with provocative behaviour, including shouting. This type of conduct is not welcome on any Delta flight,” it read.
Saleh appealed to his 2.2 million YouTube subscribers in a video explaining his side of the incident.
‘Racism is back’
He began his YouTube career in 2012 with his friends Shaikh Akbar and Abdullah Ghuman under the channel TrueStoryASA. He’s since become popular for his solo internet persona, operating under the pseudonym ASAvlogs. His fans call themselves #adoomygang.
Ahead of a trip to Dubai in September, Saleh spoke to tabloid! about being an Arab-American in America.
“Racism is back,” he said.
“When 9/11 happened, it was literally crazy. The school I was in, I was the only Middle Eastern American kid. I was like an alien in school. Throughout the years, I ended up having to hide that I’m Arab ’cause I was so scared that if I would say that I’m Arab, they would bully me the way that they did in the third grade.
“Right now, being Arab-American is something, I guess, inspirational. It means a lot. Because you go through so much, especially with all this Donald Trump nonsense going on.”
tabloid! reached out to Saleh’s management for a comment. A representative requested questions and said they would “have them answered … ASAP”. However, in a follow-up tweet, Saleh posted that the media “has been twisting up my words, so I will not be speaking to any media until I speak with my attorney.”
The incident came a day after Emmy-nominated journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin claimed he was refused service by an Uber driver because of his name, the Arabic writing on his hat and the fact that he approached the vehicle quickly to escape the cold.
Eldin said this was the third instance of racial profiling he had experienced with Uber. He claimed that one driver told him to get out of his car after hearing Eldin on the phone with his mother, speaking in Arabic.
Saleh is set to return to the UAE during his UK Tour in February.
