We took a Turkish Airlines flight in September (IST-SFO), and the seats were teeming with bedbugs (as in, multiple passengers were able to visually point them out when we were still boarding).<p>Some passengers were able to switch to other seats, while multiple others broke out in hives (including my wife). The cabin staff were polite and understanding, but once we landed, escalating to Turkish airlines was pretty useless. We've filed a case with the DOT which got the airline to respond.<p>Glad the media is covering this, we heard from multiple folks that this has been a problem.
If you ever have your home infested with bed bugs, their eradication is simple. You need to have a bedframe with countable legs, a bug-proof plastic mattress cover, and a bag of diatomaceous earth. You simply zip the cover over your mattress, and put a 1cm layer of diatomaceous earth around the feet of your bedframe. The bed bugs naturally come out to feed on you at night, then find burrows to hide in during the day. Normally they'd hide in the crooks of your mattress, but we've already prevented this. They are forced to walk down your bedframe, and over the layer of diatomaceous earth, which causes fatal ruptures in their carapace. Bed bugs can only live about a month without feeding, and you should expect any small to medium sized infestation to resolve in this timeframe, certainly any infestation which might arise from picking up a few bed bugs from traveling.
I've experienced living with bed bugs during my boarding school years. Despite getting multiple bug bites a week consistently for a couple years, I never actually got to see a live bed bug.<p>Bed bugs are no joke
Strange because you’d think it easy to fix.<p>Bedbugs are highly temperature sensitive…. treatment involves raising the temperature of infested rooms.<p>And aero plane interiors can get very hot if they sit on the runway without the aircon.<p>A few hours of the plane being hot should wipe them all out.
> the attendant dismissed their concern<p>I found Turkish airlines staff to be more stand-offish than others when I flew with them internationally a few years back. Is that anybody else's everyday experience with them?
Here is a fun YouTube video about research based eradication of bed bugs [0] Lots of facts like bed bugs don't carry or transmit diseases.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JAOTJxYqh8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JAOTJxYqh8</a>
Is this a recent phenomenon? Planes have been flying around for decades.<p>You'd think every airport and every airline would've been infested by now.
I had bed bugs and after I'd recommend cimi-shield treatment. It's a soybean based treatment that as far as I know is one of the safest treatments and long lasting (1yr+) (but expensive so rarely offered). Even dimactous earth can be a breathing hazard if stirred up and you have to leave it round visibly.
It's always a good idea to check the bed and mattress of a hotel/motel/hostel room before settling in, even with upmarket hotels. Look for small dark spots in the mattress folds and crannies, these are their faeces. If there is a bad infestation you can really suffer.<p>See Greg Ovens (great YT channel by the way) talk about his awful experience staying in a motel -
<a href="https://youtu.be/AOe9mvA3zoA?feature=shared" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/AOe9mvA3zoA?feature=shared</a>
General advice regarding bedbugs…..<p>Staying in a hotel, don’t leave bags clothes or anything lying around in the floor furniture or bed, put all your stuff in the bath/shower.<p>When you arrive check the mattress and it’s seams for signs of bedbugs (look up pics on Google of what to look for).<p>When you get home if you suspect you’ve brought some home, don’t bring anything at all into the house including shies and every single atom you are carrying.<p>If you can, if you have a freezer big enough, it’s a great weapon in the fight against bedbugs. Freeze everything you can that won’t get damaged by cold. Sheets clothes bags shoes bedding just go on a freezing frenzy.<p>Study up on diatomaceous earth solutions.
Confirming my rule: if you can’t reach it with United, Lufthansa or ANA - it’s not worth flying to.<p>Granted all of these have things wrong (LH C is ancient and has no privacy, UA staff is hit and miss, ANA is mostly excellent).<p>I don’t like changing planes in the desert thus the Arabian ones are off the plate…