Passengers on several Turkish Airlines flights reported bed bugs crawling on their seats and falling out of the cabin, and the airline said the infestations were removed, according to the report.
In March last year, 36-year-old Patience Titcombe claimed she noticed a small insect crawling on her seat after boarding a Turkish Airlines flight from Johannesburg to Istanbul.
“I almost knocked it off,” she said. new york times. “But my friend stopped me and said, 'That's bed bugs.'
The plane's flight attendants removed the insects, but dismissed Titcomb's concerns that they were bed bugs.
“Because I have kids, I had to take my clothes off and change clothes at the airport. What if I brought bed bugs home?” Titcomb told the Times.
Titcomb later posted a photo of the insect in a Facebook travel group, where other travelers shared that they had encountered similar troublesome pests on Turkish Airlines flights, according to the Times. However, he was fired by the airline.
Turkish Airlines did not respond to requests for comment.
In October, Matthew Myers, 28, and his girlfriend were on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to San Francisco. Myers said the passenger next to him tapped him on the shoulder to let him know that a bed bug had crawled across his seat and fallen off the plane.
Myers said she saw a bug land on her neighbor's lap.
“Multiple passengers discovered the bug and asked to be moved,” Myers told the Times.
Bedbugs continued to fall, and one passenger was even moved to the vacant flight attendant jump seat.
Meyers said flight attendants told panicked passengers that they had filed a formal complaint on the flight.
The airline then offered Myers a 10% discount on future flights, valid through the end of the year, he said.
The airline told him the planes would be deep cleaned every 21 days and a “general cleaning” would take place before each flight, he said.
In late October, 37-year-old Christine Bourgeois said she saw bed bugs crawling around her plane during a 10-hour flight from the Washington, D.C., area to Istanbul.
“Before I left, I noticed bugs crawling on my blanket,” she told the Times. “When I found another bug on my pillow, I realized it was bed bugs.”
After the flight, she took photos of 13 insect bites on her skin.
According to the Times, after filing the complaint, Turkish Airlines emailed Bourgeois requesting that he submit a “medical report approved by a physician, signed, stamped and dated.”
When she tried to contact the airline, she said a Turkish Airlines representative told her the reservation couldn't be found, then abruptly said, “We found it” and hung up.
She then checked her flight history and said it had been removed from the airline's app.
The airline then offered her 5,000 frequent flyer miles.
Another Turkish Airlines passenger said he was bitten by bedbugs during a flight in August. According to a screenshot of an email posted on received an email stating that the facility was being “regularly disinfected.”
Bed bugs (bed bugs) live in mattresses, bedding, carpets, and clothing, usually bite at night, can be easily transported in suitcases, and are notoriously difficult to eradicate.
In 2023, Paris suffered an outbreak of bed bugs as they took over public transportation during Fashion Week. In the same year, South Korea launched a campaign to prevent bed bugs on public transportation.
People suffering from bed bugs often have to seal all their belongings in resealable plastic bags and fumigate their homes multiple times.
For airlines, the process can take two to five days and can cost up to $125,000 between lost revenue from canceled flights and the treatment itself, according to the report.
Rob Tuck, president of aviation consulting firm Jet Research, told the Times that the plane would have to be taken to a maintenance center and airlines would have to make a decision on whether to cancel future flights.
Turkish Airlines was founded in 1933 and currently operates a fleet of approximately 400 planes to more than 300 destinations and serves several American cities, including New York. The airline operates multiple daily flights between the United States and Türkiye.
