And when the In My Head hitmaker got off the plane, he was greeted by 15 police officers as well as other members of American Airlines crew, and instead of retaliating with the foul language he claimed he was met with, he turned to social media to publicly broadcast the humiliating event - and things quickly changed.
He explained: "As you can imagine, I'm surrounded by 15 police officers, I'm not going to curse back because I know what's going to happen. So I pick up my phone, and I go live on my Instagram.
"So I go live, and I start to hear whispers happening, and as soon as they find out who I am, everything changes. Every single person becomes somebody else, and all of a sudden, we're not in trouble anymore.
"I just want everybody to be treated with respect. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. I'm not asking for anything extra, I'm not asking to be taken care of."
Meanwhile, a police report is rumoured to have detailed a different turn of events, claiming Derulo and his friends "smelled of marijuana and were getting aggressive" as they refused to hand over the passport identification.
- Bang! Showbiz