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Yes, you read the headline correctly. Those diminutive, ugly as hell, bed bugs which we hope are never in our hotel rooms, continue to find their way on to aircraft with ever increasing regularity. This is like a scene out of the Twilight Zone, except that chomping feeling on our legs, back and arms is the Cimex lectularius - the common bed bugs are chowing down on you!

Air India was the latest victim of infestation by the bed bugs. Not one, but two of their long distance planes were infested. When asked what’s up with that, they blamed it on the heat. That is New York heat, not Mumbai heat. If it was the latter, that would be pretty disingenuous to all who have ever lived in India, heat is not a new phenomena. I remember in the late 1970s sitting in Delhi and watching the temperature grow to a high of 134F (56.67C) - so hot they suspended flights from the airport as the runways were too soft for the airplanes to land - and yes bugs were plentiful.

This is a made to order advertisement to travel with sleeping sack, and on those long haul flights, crawl into your private cocoon and put a layer of fabric between you and those critters.

We did a quick search and found an an inexpensive sleeping sack for you on Amazon on sale for under $20 - should be sufficient for the desired purpose.

Back to the Air India flight and their bed bugs

Business Class passenger Saumya Shetty posted a photo of her arm on Twitter (see below), clearly a feast was had by these little critters. The Indian Express, interviewed the traveler, who was none too happy about Air India’s response to her and her three children having been the main course on her flight. She wanted a refund, and Air India gave her their thanks. Yes, they were grateful for her having highlighted the issue. And, Air India, took it seriously -

In this connection, Please be assured Ms Shetty, that the aircraft has been fumigated and temporarily withdrawn from service for special fumigation required for treatment of bedbugs. The seat covers have been replaced and the seat crevices also have been inspected and found satisfactory.

Is it unusual to have bed bugs at 30,000 feet?

We did a bit of sleuthing and found that British Airways also had these stowaways aboard their planes. In a well publicized incident, which occurred in October 2017 on a flight between Vancouver and London. In this instance, the travelers saw the bugs crawling out of the seat ahead of them, squished them as fast as they could find them, but realized that the flight was infested. The flyer, Heather Szilagyi, told CTVNews of Canada, that “It was nine hours of knowing that I was probably going to get bit, but not being sure. But there really wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was surprised I was able to relax, but what can you do?” British Airways promised to do a better job fumigating (sound familiar) and offered this traveler an upgrade on a future flight.

Did Ms. Szilagyi get bit … here’s her tweet from 2017:

@British_Airways Hi. I have received extremely bad customer support for a recent issue with bedbugs on an overnight flight. Pics: pic.twitter.com/O80hXqyrsU

— Eric Faceplant (@EricFaceplant) October 12, 2017

So enjoy your next long haul flight. And remember what our mother’s would whisper, “Nighty, night. Don’t let the bed bugs bite”

Travel with that sleeping sack!