Bedbugs were ‘pouring’ out of an airplane seat, says passenger stuck on a 9-hour flight

Years of working in hotels taught Heather Szilagyi exactly what bedbugs looked like, she told CTV.

And bedbugs are what Szilagyi says she saw “pouring” out of the airplane seat in front of her, her fiance and her 7-year-old daughter as they sat — trapped in their chairs — on a British Airways red-eye to England on Oct. 10, according to the Globe and Mail.

“To actually see them pouring out of the back of the TV on the seat, that was actually really gross,” Szilagyi told the Globe and Mail.

When she quietly told a flight attendant about the bugs, Szilagyi said the news didn’t seem to rattle her: “She was like, ‘Oh ok, sorry about that. We're sold out. We don't have anywhere to move you,’” Szilagyi told CTV.

So for the entire nine-hour flight from Vancouver to London, en route to Slovakia, they sat in seats they say were infested, Szilagyi told The Guardian.

“It was nine hours of knowing that I was probably going to get bit, but not being sure,” Szilagyi told CTV. “But there wasn't really anything I could do about it.”

She and her fiance, Eric Neilson, posted about the experience on social media, including pictures of bites Szilagyi says her daughter got from bedbugs on the flight.

As gross as the tiny, parasitic bugs are, the good news is that bedbugs aren’t known to spread disease, according to Mayo Clinic. But they’ll still bite you to feed on your blood.

Mayo Clinic says bedbug bites are itchy, red, and often come in dotted lines or clusters on the body. They’re most frequently found on the face and neck or the arms and hands. Places with a high turnover of overnight visitors are more likely to host and pass on the critters — think hotels and hospitals (and, apparently, airplanes).

British Airways ultimately apologized for the incident. And for their flight back to Canada, the three got to enjoy upgrades to business class, the Guardian reports.

“We have been in touch with our customer to apologize and investigate further,” a British Airways representative said in a statement, according to CTV. “British Airways operates more than 280,000 flights every year, and reports of bed bugs on board are extremely rare. Nevertheless, we are vigilant and continually monitor our aircraft.”

British Airways also experienced a bedbug infestation problem in 2016, according to the Telegraph.

But perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock that bedbugs have moved from the bedroom to the sky.

“One of the ways bedbugs travel is in hand luggage and personal luggage,” said Murray Isman, a University of British Columbia entomology professor who develops bedbug repellents, in an interview with the Globe and Mail.

Over the last ten years, global airline passenger traffic has grown nearly 6 percent each year, according to the International Air Transport Association.

That means more and more people are flying — with more and more opportunities to spread bedbugs, Isman told the Globe and Mail.

“Where there is a lot of movement of people in and out, sooner or later someone is going to transfer these things in something they're carrying, and this is how they get spread from hotel to hotel to hotel and this is how people bring them home,” Isman said.

And we better hope bedbugs don’t get as excited about air travel as we are: Airline passenger demand is set to double in the next 20 years, the International Air Transport Association estimates.

This story was originally published October 21, 2017 at 3:56 AM with the headline "Bedbugs were ‘pouring’ out of an airplane seat, says passenger stuck on a 9-hour flight."