New fear unlocked: a flight was recently canceled due to bed bugs. As if there weren’t already enough things to worry about when traveling, a 17-hour flight from Perth, Australia to Rome, Italy left passengers with itchy and unpleasant insect bites. Based on reports from multiple news outlets, bed bugs appeared to be responsible for the bites.
The risk of encountering bed bugs while traveling is obviously not zero. People have complained about seeing them in their hotel rooms, getting bites during the night, or worse, bringing them home in their luggage. If you worry about bed bugs hitching a ride home with you, you probably take certain precautions like inspecting your hotel room and avoiding placing your luggage on the bed. But the idea that they could be on your flight with you too? Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
Apparently, the bed bugs were found on a few seats on the plane.
A spokesperson for the airline, Qantas, said “a small number of economy seats” were affected by “an issue.” The return flight from Rome to Perth was canceled for a “deep clean of the aircraft.”
“We sincerely apologize 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 was identified on a small number of economy seat,” the spokesperson said, per The Sydney Morning Herald.
But the way passengers described the situation made it sound 1000x more horrifying.
Speaking to 9News, passengers recalled hearing other people on the plane screaming because they allegedly actually saw the insects.
A passenger named Hailey told the news outlet that the insects were “crawling over our belongings, our clothing, our Qantas blankets, and they were even crawling along the window.”
Hailey added, “They were in my husband’s shoes, crawling up our legs, crawling on our jumpers.” Another passenger claimed that they were “woken by screaming” and heard “a baby saying ‘buggies.'”
People reportedly complained about bites as well.
The airline has said it’s still investigating the situation, according to a report from CNN. But during the October 9 flight, passengers reportedly complained about insect bites and were given antihistamines to reduce itching (bed bugs aren’t dangerous, but are unpleasant and notoriously difficult to get rid of).
Qantas has said that its planes are cleaned thoroughly and disinfected every 50 days. But given that people sometimes pick up bed bugs while traveling, it’s possible that someone brought them onto the plane via their luggage at some point, according to a parasitologist who spoke to The Guardian.
The parasitologist, Michelle Power, mentioned how bed bugs are already “associated with travel,” largely because of hotels. “People may go to a hotel that’s infested and because they like dark spaces and are attracted to the smell of human clothes, they make their way into someone’s luggage,” she told the publication.
Another expert, Stephen Doggett, told ABC News Radio that, based on his knowledge of bed hugs and how they behave, they were likely “in the plane for some time and just simply not detected.”
Which is not the most reassuring thing I’ve ever heard, personally. But if it’s any consolation, he also said that encountering bed bugs on a flight is “not particularly common.”
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