By now, you’ve probably heard all about YouTuber Adam Saleh being kicked off a Delta flight simply for ‘speaking Arabic to a relative over the phone’.
Having shown you the initial footage earlier in the week, we also told you about the statement that Delta had issued in response to Saleh’s claim.
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
Now, as reported by the Daily Mail, it’s emerged that some of the passengers on the flight – which was bound for New York from London Heathrow – have said the video was a ‘planned stunt from the start’.
‘The entire thing was planned,’ a Roderick J. Edens posted on Facebook.
‘He [Saleh] wasn’t on the phone with his mom speaking Arabic,’ he added, posting a picture of a boarding pass belonging to his boyfriend – who was sitting nearby to Saleh. Â ‘He and his friends were shouting in Arabic with their fists balled up in the air. They were removed from the plane for being loud and disruptive…. then started filming claiming they were victims.
‘These guys aren’t victims….they are social media whores.’
The Mail also features a comment from another man claiming to have witnessed the incident. Named only as Anthony, his Reddit post under the name Chain187 accuses Saleh of lying about what happened.
‘Neither of them was on any phone call I could hear them talking in plain American English,’ he explained, also accompanying his post with a picture of his boarding pass as proof that he was on the flight.
‘The YouTube guy [Saleh] was trying to get his friend to shout something in Arabic which he did a total of 4 times.’
‘He shouted it across the plane and the first two times I thought he was shouting maybe a friend or something,’ he said. ‘A couple of passengers after the second time said they were making themselves and their young children uncomfortable and could they shut up.
Anthony goes on to explain that Saleh – who has 1.6m followers on his YouTube channel – was ordered to delete the first footage by one of the flight attendants before filming the footage which showed him being escorted off the aircraft.
‘They told her to shut up and then he shouted it again and her husband started saying it to them. They were filming people’s reactions on their phones, I assume for some comedy YouTube video but they were made to delete it.’
Clearly, these latest accounts differ greatly from Saleh’s well-documented version of events.
Catch up with this week’s episode of Football Friday Live:
