Reports of bed bugs on a Qantas flight prompt warning from expert

Air travel can be stressful at the best of times, but imagine adding bed bugs into the mix.

Passengers on a recent flight from Australia to Italy were reportedly faced with that nightmare.

A bed bug expert says once the blood-feeding insects are onboard, it is difficult to avoid them.

What happened?

Over the weekend, Australian media reported that bed bugs grounded a Qantas plane, after passengers complained of itchy bites aboard a flight from Perth to Rome on Friday.

The plane was grounded in Rome, with passengers scheduled to return to Perth given accommodation and re-booked on different flights within two days.

Qantas is still investigating the cause.

"We sincerely apologise to customers for the cancellation of Saturday's Rome to Perth service, which allowed our engineers and maintenance teams to carry out a deep clean of the aircraft after an issue identified on a small number of economy seats," a spokesperson said.

How common are bed-bugs on flights?

Bed bug expert Stephen Doggett told ABC News Radio that incidents of bed bugs on flights were well-documented.

"It's not particularly common, but it does occur," he said.

"My gut feeling working on bed bugs for 25 years is that it's probably been in the plane for sometime and just simply not detected."

In 2017, British Airways apologised to a family who said they were bitten by bed bugs while on a flight from Vancouver to London.

Mr Doggett said bed bugs find their way onto flights via clothes and belongings.

"People will stay in some location, some hotel or a hostel that has bed bugs, the bed bugs get into the belongings and they're carried on the flight. It's that simple," he said.

He says the higher risk areas of the plane are where the crew sleep.

"Because they're travelling so often, they're staying in hotels just for one night, and there's a huge turnover and that's a high risk for bed bugs," he said.

"They'll get deep into the seats, into the crevices."

How do airlines mitigate bed bug risks?

Qantas said it disinfected its aircraft every 50 days as part of its standard maintenance program.

But Mr Doggett said bed bugs were a hard bug to get rid of.

He said aircraft were regularly sprayed to keep certain exotic mosquitoes out of Australia, but bed bugs were a harder challenge.

"They're really hard to get rid of because they're highly resistant to insecticides and they're amongst the most resistant insects on the planet," he said.

"There's very few chemicals actually approved for use because many chemicals can damage aircraft, can damage the aluminium."

He said using a combination of a vacuum, steam and certain insecticides can be effective, but that was an expensive task.

How can you avoid them on a plane?

Unfortunately, Mr Doggett says there is virtually nothing passengers can do once they are aboard a bed bug infested flight.

"There's nowhere to go, but certainly if you think you've got bed bugs, then look in the seat, look for signs of bed bugs and most importantly take photos because you could use that even in litigation against the airline," he told ABC Perth Breakfast.

He said they will hide in the crevices and the cracks of the seats.

"Sometimes you may not see bed bugs themselves, the adult bed bugs about the size and colour of an apple seed … but the juvenile stages tend to be much smaller, and they'll be a light colour green," he said.