Bedbug infestation forces Qantas to ground airplane

Qantas has been forced to ground a plane in Rome after bedbugs were discovered on the aircraft on its way from Perth, a source with knowledge of the incident said yesterday.

The parasitic insects were found in the front of the economy section of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner as it made its way from Perth to Rome for the QF5 flight on Friday last week, the source said.

Bedbugs are small insects that feed on the blood of some mammals, including humans, which can be hard to eradicate.

A Qantas plane takes off from Sydney International Airport in Australia on Aug. 22, 2017.

Photo: Reuters

As first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, the aircraft had to be taken out of service for cleaning after its arrival in the Italian capital, resulting in the cancelation of the Qantas Rome to Perth service on Saturday.

A Qantas spokesperson said the flight was canceled to allow its engineers and maintenance teams to carry out a deep clean of the aircraft after “an issue identified on a small number of economy seats.”

The airline wanted to “sincerely apologize” to customers for the disruption, they said.

Affected passengers were given accommodation and rebooked on alternative flights within 48 hours of their original departure, Qantas said.

Its aircraft cabins were cleaned regularly and to an extremely high standard and treated with disinfectant every 50 days as a standard precautionary cleaning measure, the airline said.

Macquarie University parasitologist Michelle Power said the bedbugs had “more than likely” been brought on to the plane in someone’s luggage or on a passenger’s clothes and then escaped into the cabin.

“They’re associated with travel. People may go to a hotel that’s infested and because they like dark spaces and are attracted to the smell of human clothes, they make their way into someone’s luggage,” she said.

“They’re a flightless insect, without planes,” she said.

Bedbugs are not dangerous, even though their bites could be itchy and irritating, but they are difficult to get rid of and could hide in bedsheets and crevices for a long time without needing to feed, Power said.