Tensions were high Wednesday morning after a video of two Arabic men being “kicked off” a Delta flight for speaking their native language went viral.
Adam Saleh, and his friend Slim Albaher claim that they were removed from the flight after some passengers felt uncomfortable with Adam speaking Arabic on a phone call to his mother.
“Guys, we spoke a different language on the plane and now we’re getting kicked out,” Saleh said in the video. “This is 2016. 2016. Look, Delta Air Lines are kicking us out because we spoke a different language. You guys are racist. I cannot believe my eyes.”
As he recorded the passengers on the plane, you can see and hear a number of passengers waving, and shouting, “Bye!”
Adam, who is a popular YouTube prankster started receiving mixed support after YouTube videos of him doing airplane pranks similar to the incident became the main focus at hand.
Both Adam, and his agent, Naz Rahman continue to express that the scenario was absolutely not fake, and they wouldn’t go to such an extent for a prank.
“Yes he’s a prankster, yes he does hoaxes, but that doesn’t mean when something does happen that it’s a prank,” Rahman told TSR. “I feel like people are being unfair in saying that it’s a prank when you can see he’s clearly cut up about it and he’s in bits…Yes it’s like the boy who cried wolf but that doesn’t explain why he has to deal with this in this manner.”
Rahman continues on to say that Delta knows they messed up, and they’re trying to make themselves look good by saying Saleh and his friend were being disruptive on the plane.
“They know they messed up. This isn’t the first time Delta has done this, it’s happened before,” he said, adding that Delta putting out a statement doesn’t explain anything.
Rahman also tells us that Delta has not reached out to them since the incident took place.
As for Adam, he seems to be pretty shook since his experience with Delta, “He’s [Adam] distraught, he’s extremely distraught, he just can’t get to the bottom of how this happened to him,” Rahman tells us. “It’s very unexpected. He didn’t think something like this would ever happen to him.”
The hashtag #BoycottDelta has since been trending, even after the airline put out a statement defending their decision to remove Saleh and Albaher from the plane.
Via Delta:
“Based on the information collected to date, it appears the customers who were removed 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.”
Delta is still receiving a lot of backlash however, especially after some may argue that the “safety and comfort of their passengers and employees,” wasn’t handled in the same way during other controversial, high profile scenarios that have taken place on the airline in the last few months.
Just last month, we reported on a man who was allowed to remain on a Delta flight after he made passengers uncomfortable when he started shouting about Donald Trump being “the new sheriff” in town–referring to some passengers as “Hillary Bitches.”
This transpired soon after the 2016 presidential election in November.
A month prior to that, we also reported on Tamika Cross, a physician who tried to help a sick passenger on a Delta flight, but was quickly shut down by a flight attendant who didn’t believe she was a doctor.
Let’s just hope no one else catches Delta slipping because it’s not looking too good for business.
In addition to the #BoycottDelta hashtag, Rapper French Montana expressed his concern of his own mother after Saleh’s experience, and vowed to never fly Delta again.
TSR STAFF : Thembi So. @ThembiTV_ on Instagram & Twitter
