Air travel is known for a host of inconveniences: long lines at airports, cramped seats, and seemingly constant delays.
Now, after passengers on several Turkish Airlines found bedbugs on their planes, travelers might have to add pests to the growing list of air-travel headaches.
Bedbugs are “more common on planes than people like to admit,” according to Reuven Noyman, owner of NYC Steam Cleaning, which does cleanings for private jets.
From March to October 2024, passengers on at least three Turkish Airlines flights found bedbugs on their plane, according to a story first reported in the New York Times.
Like apartment buildings or hotels, bedbugs can be found on planes because they can live on any type of cloth fabric, such as mattresses, clothes, or suitcases. “You get a lot of bedbugs and dust mites just because people are sitting on fabric,” Noyman said, referencing the covers of airplane seats. “I mean realistically it’s a haven for them.”
Bedbugs are highly transmissible because people don’t often know they have them and can spread them inadvertently. They are also extremely difficult to kill and require extensive treatment, according to Noyman. If they’re found in places like homes or hotels, owners usually fumigate the buildings to ensure they eliminate all the bedbugs. However, that’s not possible to do on a plane because fumigating an aircraft can damage the electrical wiring found throughout the cabin, according to Noyman.
When cleaning a plane, companies like Noyman’s have to rely on steam washing rather than chemical agents to kill bedbugs. “First we do a full vacuuming and detailing of the plane, then we steam wash all the fabrics,” he said.
On the Turkish Airlines flights, passengers reported finding bedbugs in seats, blankets, pillows, and crawling on the ceiling of the plane, according to the Times.
Turkish Airlines said it regularly cleans and sanitizes all its aircraft before each flight. When issues of bedbugs are raised, it takes special precautions, according to a statement from media relations senior vice president Yahya Üstün.
“Bedbug cases are a general issue occasionally encountered in public spaces, including aircraft,” Üstün said. “In this regard, we take all feedback seriously and thoroughly investigate each report. In such cases, affected aircraft are promptly subjected to all necessary inspections and treatments.”
The earliest reports of bedbugs in 2024 date back to a March flight from Johannesburg to Istanbul, in which 36-year-old passenger Patience Titcombe found a bedbug on her seat cushion. After Titcombe’s friend pointed out it was a bedbug, she took measures to ensure she didn’t bring the pest home with her.
“I had to strip down at the airport and change clothes because I have kids,” Titcombe told the Times. “What if I brought bedbugs home?”
In October, passengers on flights from Istanbul to San Francisco and from Washington Dulles to Istanbul also reported seeing bedbugs. Kristin Bourgeois, the 37-year-old passenger on the flight from Washington, said she found 13 bite marks on her body from the bedbugs when she got off the plane. Bedbugs, which feed on human blood, often leave red marks that can swell and become red when they bite.
Bourgeois said she realized they were bedbugs when she found them crawling in multiple places. “Before departure, I noticed a bug crawling on my blanket,” she said in an interview with the Times. “When I found another on the pillow, I realized it was a bedbug.”
