Nick Lachey Describes 6.5-Hour Jessica Simpson Flight Run-In

Nick Lachey said his March 29 plane run-in with Jessica Simpson was “strangely OK” after the two spent six and a half hours on a flight to Hawaii. On Wednesday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live, he framed the encounter as cordial, not dramatic, even with both former spouses and their families on board.

March 29 in the same vicinity

Lachey said, “it’s been 20 years” since he was married to Simpson, then added, “We hadn’t seen each other in those 20 years, then spent six and a half hours on a flight to Hawaii together.” He also said they were just “in the same vicinity,” and that “everyone was very, very cordial” and “very respectful.”

Vanessa Lachey and Tina Ann Drew

Vanessa Lachey and the couple’s three children were on the flight from Los Angeles, while Simpson was with her former mother-in-law, Tina Ann Drew. Lachey said he believed Simpson’s children and maybe her husband were also on the plane, but not with him. Andy Cohen asked whether Simpson’s children were in a separate class of service, and Lachey said they were.

Twenty years after 2006

The plane encounter lands two decades after Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey finalized their divorce in 2006, following a marriage that began in 2002. The timing is the story: a shared flight, the family overlap, and the blunt way Lachey described it make the moment more revealing than the usual celebrity travel anecdote.

That reaction also sits against the competing version that surfaced at the time, when TMZ reported in April that Simpson switched seats with someone to sit farther from Lachey, while Us Weekly reported that the two actually said hello and had a nice, cordial conversation. The public takeaway is simple enough: whatever discomfort existed at boarding did not stop a six-and-a-half-hour flight from becoming a polite reunion.