Why would he need to fly? He should already be in the country where he applied. Sounds like he didn’t follow the policy and the agent is telling him not to continue because they will see in his passport that he wasn’t there when he applied.
There are three routes to apply: digital nomad, soft power, and dependent. For example, If one spouse is a digital nomad and the other isn’t, they can apply as a dependent of the spouse who is a digital nomad. That being said, they still have to fulfill the other requirements, such as 500k