YouTube star Adam Saleh on Delta plane incident: 'I'm not the boy who cried wolf'

A YouTube star who says he was thrown off a Delta Air Lines flight from London to New York because he was speaking Arabic has defended his version of events but admitted that his reputation for pranks made him sound like "the boy who cried wolf".

Adam Saleh, who has more than two million followers on YouTube, was removed from a plane with his friend Slim Albaher at London's Heathrow Airport and broadcast footage of the incident via social media.

He said he had been talking to his mother on the phone in Arabic.

Delta Air Lines said in a statement that he and another passenger had been removed because it appeared that they had sought to provoke other passengers.

"It appears the customers who were removed sought to disrupt the cabin with provocative behaviour, including shouting," the company said in a statement.

"This type of conduct is not welcome on any Delta flight."

Police in London also confirmed that its officers had escorted two passengers removed from a flight back to the terminal but that no one had been arrested.

In a statement posted on Twitter after flying back to New York on a later flight, Saleh stood by his account and said he would not comment further to the media until he had spoken to his lawyers.

"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," he wrote.

In a video posted on his YouTube channel earlier this month, Saleh falsely claimed that he had managed to smuggle himself on to a plane inside a suitcase.

A member of Saleh's management team told Middle East Eye that, on hearing Saleh speaking Arabic, other passengers aboard the plane "got angry and started abusing him, swearing and saying that they felt threatened as he was speaking a different language".

The incident comes amid claims of discrimination following a number of reported incidents of Muslim passengers being removed from flights in the US and Europe.