While it’s not as exciting a movie premise as “Snakes on a Plane.” We can imagine Samuel L. Jackson’s unique voice complaining about how he’s “tired of these <expletive> bugs on this <expletive> plane.”
Apparently British Airways flight crews are just as frustrated with these insects as we imagine Nick Fury/Jules would be in a film. Last week a flight crew refused to fly on a plane due to a bed bug infestation.
They walked out minutes before take-off and were beyond their working hours when a replacement plane was found.
A BA source said: “The cabin crew saw bedbugs crawling over the seats — visible to the naked eye.
“They said it was unacceptable to work on that aircraft.”
This is just the latest incident for the global airline, which had additional bad bed bug publicity a few days before (is there ever good bed bug publicity?) when a passenger complained about getting 150 bites on route from London to South Africa. It had to apologize to passengers in October 2017 for another high profile bed bug encounter and had grounded two planes after passengers complained in 2011. There have been other high profile bed bug incidents on BA in recent years.
This airline is not alone in its troubles. By the way, bed bugs don’t care what class seat you have. They dine on all passengers in all sections.
This isn’t just an issue on planes, airports are plagued too. Bed bugs were found in the passenger area of Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. Not to be outdone by their smaller cousins, roaches took over Chinese flights last fall.
In light of the negative customer and public relations issues that airlines experience due to Bed Bugs, it is important for carriers to ask:
• What does it cost an airline to take an airplane out of service for two days – all because of the current Bed Bug epidemic?
• What is the public relations damage to an airline after passengers report Bed Bug issues?
• What does it cost the airline in terms of lost sales when it gets a reputation for having Bed Bugs?
To learn more about a solution that keeps planes flying without interruptions and without unwanted publicity visit Bell Environmental.