On a five- or six-hour Hawaii flight, nobody wants to trade a carefully chosen aisle or extra-legroom seat for something worse just so other passengers can sit together. We’ve covered unwanted seat-swap pressure on Hawaii flights, and heard from readers who refuse to budge. But a recent confrontation went in a completely different direction. The passenger started recording the crew and was removed before departure, even though the airline reportedly told its employees that recording alone isn’t grounds for removal.
This time it happened September 9 aboard a Delta flight from Bogota to Atlanta. While that wasn’t a Hawaii flight, the airline flies to the islands, and its policies apply here as well. On the Bogotá flight, Santiago Daza says a flight attendant asked him to give up his assigned seat so a woman could sit next to her husband. He initially agreed, but changed his mind after seeing that the replacement seat was smaller and less comfortable. Daza stayed in his original seat, and the disagreement escalated when another crew member approached him.
Santiago Daza says he began recording the escalating encounter with Meta smart glasses. The video captures a crew member asking him to stop filming, but Delta later said Daza failed to follow crew instructions.
Colombian news outlet Minuto60 reported, citing information obtained off the record, that the instruction Daza refused was an order to stop recording. Delta hasn’t publicly confirmed that account or identified any other instruction he disobeyed. That leaves a potentially significant conflict with the airline’s own published and internal recording guidance.
Delta’s instructions to its own flight attendants.
In October 2024, Delta reportedly issued an internal memo after consulting with its legal team. According to reporting at the time, flight attendants could ask passengers not to film them, but “cannot force them to stop, nor may we remove someone from a flight merely because they took a photo or video.”
The memo reportedly encouraged de-escalation and seeking assistance from ground personnel or pilots. It recognized an exception when recording or accompanying behavior interfered with flight safety or security, including the safety of employees and passengers. The original memo isn’t publicly available for independent inspection, but Delta’s current onboard experience page reinforces the general principle, describing customer photos and videos as an important part of travel subject to safety and security restrictions.
A seat request isn’t necessarily a crew order.
A request to accommodate another passenger is different from an airline formally changing someone’s assigned seat. We’ve experienced that ourselves. After we’d checked in and received our boarding passes, American Airlines reassigned our seats to accommodate a minor whose parents had voluntarily moved, leaving us separated until we managed to get it sorted out before boarding. BOH reader Patricia H put the passenger frustration plainly in our earlier seat-squatting discussion: “That is unfair pressure to put on people who want what they planned for and paid for.”
As we explained in our earlier reporting on confirmed Hawaii seat assignments, a paid seat isn’t an absolute guarantee. Delta’s contract allows assignments to change for operational reasons, although the airline hasn’t publicly established that Daza’s seat was formally reassigned rather than simply requested for another passenger.
We’ve seen the other side of seat enforcement ourselves. On our Southwest flight out of Honolulu, a gate agent walked through a half-empty aircraft, checked a seating manifest, and required passengers to return to their assigned seats. The airline was enforcing its own assignments, even when travelers couldn’t understand why moving to an empty seat was a problem.
Delta’s international contract of carriage gives the airline much broader removal authority than most passengers probably realize. Under Rule 7, someone who fails to obey an instruction from a flight crew member may be removed. Delta’s domestic contract, covering its Hawaii flights, contains the same provision.
Federal law separately requires compliance with specific safety instructions, including seat belt requirements, and prohibits threatening, intimidating, or interfering with crew members performing their duties. Not every disagreement automatically violates a federal safety regulation, but an airline can still have contractual grounds to remove someone. A passenger who believes an instruction is unreasonable may have little opportunity to challenge it while remaining aboard.
The problem with documenting what happens onboard.
Daza says Delta subsequently told him that after reviewing the flight, it found no report from the captain or crew documenting his removal. That account was also reported by other media, although Delta hasn’t independently confirmed the absence of a report.
When we examined British Airways’ restrictions on filming airline crews last May, BOH reader Dee asked what would happen to recordings needed as evidence of onboard confrontations, including those involving crew members. Troy disagreed with unrestricted filming: “I wouldn’t want people constantly recording me at my job.” Daza’s footage captures part of the exchange, but doesn’t establish why he was removed.
For Hawaii travelers, removal before departure can mean a lost hotel night, disrupted mainland connections and reservations, or another day waiting for the next available flight. Someone who has paid extra for a particular seat may feel entirely justified in challenging a proposed move, especially when the alternative is substantially worse. But once a crew member gives an instruction, continuing the argument can put the entire Hawaii trip at risk.
We don’t know whether Delta had a legitimate safety reason for the order reportedly given to Daza, and the airline hasn’t explained how that instruction fits with its own recording guidance.
Would you stop filming if a crew member ordered you to, even when you believed the recording was your best evidence of being treated unfairly, or would you keep recording and risk losing your flight?
Photo Credit: © Beat of Hawaii with surfer at Kona Tiki Hotel, Big Island.
By Rob and Jeff, Beat of Hawaii.
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Without knowing if there was a relationship, friendship to some flight crew member you really don’t know the situation of why this person was able to sit next to her husband. I think flight crew can place anyone anywhere at will because IMO airlines probably have the we reserve the right clause embedded in your terms of agreement for your ticket purchase.
Before the plane leaves the ground I would comply with the stop recording request.
On the other hand most times when I do record or photograph something while on a flight is the scenery outside or the takeoff/landing phases of the plane.
Rarely am I interested in what is going on inside enough to take a photo or make a clip. I also don’t like filming people I don’t know in the plane.
I also hate being filmed or photographed myself.
I’ve had a couple of some-what similar experiences with kind of thing. On one flight, a twenty-something guy came up from the back of the plane after boarding and asked if I would swap seats with him so he could sit next to his friend. I was in a forward, isle seat. I declined, he persisted, no sale. A flight attendant came down the isle to check on things, the guy called me a jerk for not changing seats, and the attendant told him to take his seat,
The second time, I was in my assigned seat in a half full aircraft. Several of us were requested to relocate by the pilot, via the flight attendant, to better balance the weight load. Okay, no problem, although I didn’t particularly like the bulkhead seat.
Regarding filming on flights.
Airlines own the aircraft, therefore it is not public space nor public transportation.
It’s a paid service and provider.
As a passenger I do not want anyone taking my picture. Period.
Put up signs prohibiting filming of passengers or crew and specify those who do so will be removed from the flight even at 30,000 feet.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone if this dispute is eventually settled by legal means. And if settled out of court, Delta will ensure that settlement and resolution information remain unknown to the public.
Something I’ve heard a pilot explain is that no matter if the flight attendant is the one in the wrong, they’re still kicking the passenger off.
The airplane can’t fly without the designated number of cabin crew. Replacement could be many hours to get someone else. But the plane has no issue with flying without a passenger. So they’re kicking the passenger off.
Wow, grown adults who cannot sit separately for a few hours? And who need to inconvenience other people because of their clinginess?
Sheesh.
Unless there were extenuating factors – one of them couldn’t speak English or needed help feeding themselves, etc. – then this whole situation was caused by selfish, unreasonable flyers.
I would not have moved unless specifically ordered to by the pilot and given a good reason to do so.
This factually fuzzy scenario gives me these thoughts. I live on Maui and often fly Alaska/Hawai’ian to the Mainland. I am generally the plan ahead type and pay extra for more legroom,etc. I am also a lawyer, and my favorite constitutional right is the right to privacy. I think people who videotape on planes should be considerate of others. I do not want to be photographed while I fly even though it may be legal to do so (it depends, as lawyers say. ). I do note that the cost of a more comfortable seat is about $300 Rt in addition to main cabin fare. I do everything I can to insure I get to stay there. But I am tired of incivility. I have moved for a child but never disobeyed an FA
Two comments:
1. When he declined to leave his chosen seat the second FA should not have approached him and pressured him.
2. Couples do not have a constitutional right, to sit together. My husband and I flew many times in different areas of the plane. Not a big deal to us. We figured we’re landing at the same airport, on the same plane. These FA’s were wrong in pressuring the gentleman to move. Sitting separately is not going to kill you. Now, if it were small children who need to be with a parent, I get that.
The burden is upon you to get assigned seats as soon as they’re available. If that doesn’t work get to the airport early and inquire at the ticket counter. They usually have seats they can “play with”. But do Not expect people to move just so you can be with your spouse.
If you want to sit together, you give up the better seat. Wanting someone to give up a premium seat is rediculous.
I recently was on a long haul flight in Delta premium select. (Approximately equivalent to domestic first class.) After falling asleep, I woke up next to a new seatmate. Two of the three of them got status upgrades, and their solution was to time share the nice seat.
For anyone to think I should have given up the double price ticket to someone who’s companions got status upgrades is nuts.
This is a prime example of how the airline is in charge no matter the status or degree to the ticket level booked. Just because you spent big bucks on first class don’t necessarily mean you are entitled. IMO this might fall under the same theory as you have the privledge to possess a drivers license and it is not a right to own a drivers license.
Sorry, but I don’t think purchasing airline tickets and specific seats has any comparison to a driver’s license the rights/responsibilities of driving! Although an airline’s basic responsibility is to transport passengers safely from point A to point B, all airlines encourage loyalty to gain status and the perks that go with it, and all airlines charge for better seats, all of which creates a system and the belief that you are getting what you pay for, and/or what you earned. To then be able to just take that away for whatever reason that comes up, that has nothing to do with safety, is just not good business practice. Why should airlines be able to treat their customers that way?
If they do this too much, they invite legislation they won’t like.
Any business has the right to refuse service and in the ticket purchase stipulation or rules does it explain that an airline can cancel, revoke, or take away someone’s paid reservation at will? What’s the difference between this and getting escorted out of a concert or movie theatre for negative acts? Passengers on airlines IMO rent the seats at which are not their property and actually pay for the service to get them from point A to B. Don’t the main information on your boarding pass state Flight # Carrier, Departure city and destination and the not so significant information is your seat assignment information. Any reason the airline has to revoke your reservation would include your seat assignment.
This is really tricky, and I hope I’m never asked to move from carefully chosen airline seats that either cost me extra or that I earned through status plus planning far ahead! I understand that there are several legitimate reasons that a passenger can be required to change seats, but for a husband and wife to sit together, unless one is a caregiver for the other, is not (to me) a legitimate reason to force a change. I also understand you cannot video a conflict or interactions without the permission of the people being filmed – that makes sense to me. When you read some of the contract of carriage, it’s kind of crazy how little power the passenger has. And it’s just getting worse now with the new rules effective October 19th that limit compensation for some mechanical issues. I wish I didn’t need to fly anywhere!
For the money I pay to go to Hawaii, I wouldn’t trade a seat either. When people book, you pick your seat and know where you are sitting. Don’t try to trade up just because you want to sit near family. You all should have figured it out when you booked. Also, I only fly. Hawaiian/Alaskan to Hawaii and I don’t think that’s happened to anyone that I know of.
Hawaiian Air bumped my 74 year old invalid wife from First Class seat 1A to 5A before departure from Kona to Phoenix with no explanation on the seat change. Male flight attendant told her to hurry up and did not offer to help her move her carry on. She had braces on both hands. The passenger seated next to her helped her move. Yes Hawaiian Air does it too.
A couple of thoughts- Why couldn’t the husband move to a lesser seat with his wife and the passenger there could be moved to the better seat next to Daza.?
On an overnight flight from San Francisco to London, the lady in front of us raced a fuss because the passenger in front of her fully reclined his seat. She demanded a first class upgrade. The flight attendant offered to sell it to her for about $1,000, we take credit cards! Finally a pilot appeared to tell her she needed to stop making a ruckus. A few minutes later the reclining passenger disappeared to first class never to be seen again!
Michael, I love this story. FA’s (and if necessary, pilots) have great people skills in resolving seating arrangements disputes. Here is my own simplified interpretation of the rules from the contract of carriage and flight crews’ application of them: even if you have a document that says you have been assigned a specific seat, , that seat is not really yours until your okole (rear)is in it, and the plane is actually in the air. And even mid flight you maybe asked to move by a FA fora legitimate reason. On the plane, the flight crew is The Boss.
A simple voice recording could have sufficed. A video recording isn’t always necessary. For the umpteenth time, failure to plan ahead does not transfer the responsibility of resolving a seating issue to someone who bought and paid for a premium seat. Airlines created the situation themselves by charging a premium to sit in aisle and window seats. They should not add insult to injury by asking people to move in order to accommodate someone who failed to plan ahead.