Santiago Daza removed from Delta flight after refusing seat swap

A YouTube video posted October 6 by the channel Nexus HQ, titled "Man Refuses to Swap Airplane Seats With Couple and Gets Kicked Off Flight 😳." The channel’s description names the passenger as Santiago Daza and says he was removed from a Delta Air Lines flight after refusing a seat swap meant to keep a couple together and then recording the dispute.

Live and Let’s Fly published an account of the episode on October 6 by Matthew Klint. Klint wrote that Daza was traveling on flight DL983 from Bogotá to Atlanta in September when crew asked him to change seats so a woman could sit beside her husband. Daza initially agreed, according to that reporting and to the Nexus HQ description. He declined after seeing the replacement, which he described as smaller and less comfortable than the seat he had paid for, and went back to his original assignment.

The encounter escalated from there, those sources say. A crew member asked Daza for his name and personal information. Uncomfortable with the turn, he began recording with Meta smart glasses. Crew members ordered him to stop filming, according to the passenger’s account as carried by Live and Let’s Fly and restated in the channel description. Daza says he was then told the captain had decided to take him off the flight. He gathered his belongings and left before departure.

Delta gave Colombian outlet Minuto60 a different explanation. The airline said the passenger was removed for failing to follow crew instructions and stressed that safety came first. “The safety of our customers and our crew is always above all else,” Delta said in the statement quoted by Live and Let’s Fly. The airline did not name the specific instruction at issue. Minuto60 separately reported, citing an unnamed source, that refusal to stop filming triggered the removal. Klint noted that detail did not appear in Delta’s official statement. InsideFlyer aggregated the same competing versions on October 6, stating that Delta had not clarified whether the recording itself was the decisive factor.

Footage began circulating widely the week of October 5 and 6. On October 5, the X account Colombia Oscura posted that a young traveler bound from Bogotá to the United States had been taken off a Delta flight after declining to give up his seat once he saw the substitute was very small and uncomfortable, labeling the outcome “#INJUSTO” and tagging the airline. The Nexus HQ description says Daza’s own point-of-view recording later drew more than six million views online as viewers argued over seat etiquette, airline rules and recording rights.