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On Thursday, May 22, Britney Spears was reportedly traveling from Mexico to Los Angeles on a private jet, resulting in a commotion. According to TMZ, Spears, who was in Cabo San Lucas, was flying to LAX with her security when she started drinking on the private jet.
The Stronger singer then pulled out a cigarette, lit it up, and started smoking mid-air, which violated the federal aviation regulations. Spears' smoking alarmed the flight attendants on board, who insisted that she put the cigarette out. Even after Britney complied to do so, authorities were contacted mid-flight.
When the plane landed at LAX, authorities were present to meet Britney Spears and issued her a warning about her in-flight conduct. However, after the brief meeting, the Toxic singer was free to leave.
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An insider source told PEOPLE that it wasn't Spears' first flight conduct warning, adding:
"She doesn't exactly follow the rules."
The Slumber Party singer herself addressed the flight incident in an Instagram reel on Saturday, claiming she "felt so smart".
Spears added that her friend lit the cigarette up and put it in her mouth, which led her to believe that she was on a plane on which smoking was allowed.
Ben Affleck recently spoke about having "empathy" for Britney Spears
The in-flight smoking incident comes nearly a month after Britney Spears was mentioned by Ben Affleck during a podcast appearance on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von (April 24).
Opening up about his compassion for what Britney Spears had to go through due to paparazzi frenzy, Affleck said:
"A long time ago, years and years ago, I really had a lot of empathy for Britney Spears because I remember it seemed like — I mean [she’s] not someone I knew or hung out with — but just like everybody else you see all this sh*t that comes through."
The Batman actor then spoke from his personal experience, saying that having all those people follow her around when she "may or may not have been having difficulty" was a cruel fate for anyone. Ben continued:
"That’s the first time I thought this is kind of a weird, unintentional — I think culturally — but kind of collective cruelty where what’s taken out of the image that you see are the people around waving the stick at the tiger or poking on it or whatever and all you see is the growling animal or whatever it is."
Per PEOPLE, Britney Spears has spent 13 years under a conservatorship under her father, due to the mental health concerns she faced after multiple troubling incidents back in the early 2000s.
It was in November 2021 that the Brightest Morning singer's petition to terminate the conservatorship was accepted in court.
Since then, Britney has released her tell-all memoir, The Woman in Me, where she speaks about her childhood, relationship with Justin Timberlake, and other anecdotes about living under the spotlight.
