Bed Bugs Bite into Qantas Flight, Leaving Passengers Itchy and Airlines Scrambled

Air travel can be stressful at the best of times, but imagine adding bed bugs into the mix. Passengers on a recent flight from Australia to Italy were reportedly faced with that nightmare.

A Qantas plane was grounded in Rome after passengers complained of itchy bites aboard a flight from Perth on Friday. The passengers were given accommodation and re-booked on different flights within two days. Qantas is still investigating the cause.

Bed bugs get on flights via people's clothing and belongings. "We sincerely apologise to customers for the cancellation of Saturday's Rome to Perth service, which allowed our engineers and maintenance teams to carry out a deep clean of the aircraft after an issue identified on a small number of economy seats," a spokesperson said.

How common are bed bugs on flights?

Bed bug expert Stephen Doggett said incidents of bed bugs on flights were well-documented. "It's not particularly common, but it does occur," he said. "My gut feeling working on bed bugs for 25 years is that it's probably been in the plane for sometime and just simply not detected."

In 2017, a family complained of bed bugs on a flight from Vancouver to London, prompting British Airways to apologize. Mr. Doggett said bed bugs find their way onto flights via clothes and belongings.

"People will stay in some location, some hotel or a hostel that has bed bugs, the bed bugs get into the belongings and they're carried on the flight. It's that simple," he said.

How do airlines mitigate bed bug risks?

Qantas said it disinfected its aircraft every 50 days as part of its standard maintenance program. But Mr. Doggett said bed bugs were a hard bug to get rid of.

"They're really hard to get rid of because they're highly resistant to insecticides and they're amongst the most resistant insects on the planet," he said. "There's very few chemicals actually approved for use because many chemicals can damage aircraft, can damage the aluminium."

He said using a combination of a vacuum, steam and certain insecticides can be effective, but that was an expensive task.

How can you avoid them on a plane?

Unfortunately, Mr. Doggett says there is virtually nothing passengers can do once they are aboard a bed bug infested flight. "There's nowhere to go, but certainly if you think you've got bed bugs, then look in the seat, look for signs of bed bugs and most importantly take photos because you could use that even in litigation against the airline," he said.

He said they will hide in the crevices and the cracks of the seats. "Sometimes you may not see bed bugs themselves, the adult bed bugs about the size and colour of an apple seed … but the juvenile stages tend to be much smaller, and they'll be a light colour green," he said.