Passengers on multiple Turkish Airlines flights reported bedbugs crawling on the seats and falling from the cabin – with the carrier brushing off the infestations, according to a report.
Last March, Patience Titcombe, 36, claimed she noticed a tiny bug crawling up her seat after she boarded her Turkish Airlines flight from Johannesbur to Istanbul.
“I almost flicked it away,” she told The New York Times. “But my friend stopped me and said, ‘That’s a bedbug.’”
A flight attendant on the plane got rid of the insect, but dismissed Titcombe’s concerns that it was a bedbug, she said.
“I had to strip down at the airport and change clothes because I have kids — what if I brought bedbugs home?” Titcombe told the Times.
Titcombe later posted photos of the bug in a travel group on Facebook, where other travelers shared similar encounters with the nasty pests on their Turkish Airlines flights that were dismissed by the carrier, according to the Times.
Turkish Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In October, Matthew Myers, 28, and his girlfriend were en route from Istanbul to San Francisco on a Turkish Airlines flight. The passenger next to Myers tapped him on the shoulder to alert him that there were bedbugs crawling on the seats and falling from the plane cabin, he said.
Myers said he saw bugs fall onto his neighbor’s lap.
“Multiple passengers were asking to move seats after discovering bugs,” Myers told the Times.
One passenger even moved to an empty flight attendant jump seat as bedbugs continued to rain down, he said.
A flight attendant told the panicked passengers that she had filed an official complaint during the flight, Myers said.
The airline later offered Myers a 10% discount on future flights — valid through the end of the year, he said.
The carrier told him that the planes are deep-cleaned every 21 days and have “general cleaning” before each flight, he said.
Later in October, Kristin Bourgeois, 37, said she saw bedbugs crawling around the plane during her 10-hour flight from the D.C. area to Istanbul.
“Before departure, I noticed a bug crawling on my blanket,” she told the Times. “When I found another on the pillow, I realized it was a bedbug.”
She took photos of 13 bug bites on her skin after the flight.
After filing a complaint, Turkish Airlines demanded via email that Bourgeois submit “a medical report approved by a doctor with signature, stamp and date,” according to the Times.
When she tried to follow up with the airline, she said Turkish Airlines representatives told her they could not find her reservation – then suddenly said they found it and hung up the phone.
Afterwards, she said she checked her flight history and saw it had been removed from the airline’s app.
The airline later offered her 5,000 frequent flier miles.
Another Turkish Airlines passenger said they were bitten by bedbugs during an August flight. Despite sharing photos of the bites with the carrier’s help desk, the passenger received an email saying that Turkish Airlines could not find any complaints from their flight and that their aircrafts are “disinfected regularly,” according to a screenshot of the email posted on X.
Bedbugs – which live in mattresses, bedding, carpets and clothing, and typically bite at night – can easily be transferred in suitcases and are infamously challenging to eradicate.
In 2023, Paris suffered a bedbug outbreak during its Fashion Week as the pests took over public transit. South Korea launched a bedbug prevention campaign at mass transportation centers that same year.
People suffering from bedbugs often have to seal all their belongings in airtight plastic bags and fumigate their homes multiple times.
For airlines, the process takes two to five days and can cost up to $125,000 between lost revenue from canceled flights and the treatment itself, according to the report.
Planes must be brought to maintenance centers, and air carriers have to make the decision of whether to cancel future flights, Rob Tuck, president of aviation consulting firm Jet Research, told the Times.
Turkish Airlines was founded in 1933 and operates nearly 400 airplanes across more than 300 destinations today, flying to several American cities including New York. The airline operates multiple flights daily between the US and Turkey.
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