A Woman Was Escorted off a Recent Spirit Flight After Smoking Onboard

A Florida-bound woman traveling from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale earlier this week broke one of the cardinal flying rules: no smoking on the aircraft. Even though smoking on board commercial flights from the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand has been banned since 1994, it appears the woman, who was later escorted off the plane by officials, decided the nicotine was worth the repercussions.

According to a TikTok video taken by one of the nearby passengers, when asked by fellow passengers to please not smoke on the plane, the woman replied that it had been a “long day.” The running flight time for a Spirit Airlines flight from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale is three hours. Thankfully, the offending passenger did not light up mid-flight but rather waited until the plane landed and was delayed on the tarmac in Fort Lauderdale.

There are many questions—why not just wait a bit longer to smoke in a designated area? Did she think she would really get away with it? What was the penalty for breaking the long-standing law?—but perhaps more intriguing is that this isn’t the first time a Spirit passenger has started smoking while onboard a flight.

Back in 2019, a different Spirit passenger took a cigarette break while en route to Minneapolis. It was later reported that the man appeared to be drunk and had previously been shouting on the flight. As a video recorded by the man's row-mate shows, he only managed to take a drag or two before passing out with the lit cigarette in his hand.

He was quickly awakened by a flight attendant. He seemed genuinely surprised he had lit up and forgotten it was illegal—unlike Spirit's most recent offender, who was fairly nonchalant about the whole thing. Once the plane landed, he was escorted off the flight. This was also posted on social media.