Bed Bugs and Pilots

[house]

Hotels have a horrible rep for bed bugs. With my current job, i'm in a different hotel up to 10 nights a month and I recently noticed bed bugs in my apartment! Those little bastards must have hitched a ride in my luggage. Is this pretty common amongst pilots doing multi-day pairings?

[Roar]

I would have to say you just had some bad luck, I have spent over 200 nights a year in hotels for the last 12 years and have brought a few things home but never bed bugs!

[Cat Driver]

Many years ago we used blue ointment to get rid of " bed bugs " and it makes things easier at home if one gets rid of them before you go back home.

And you don't need multi day pairings to get them, you can get them through one pairing.

[Duncan Idaho]

I thought you were gonna say they were the two worst things to have in your bed

[North Shore]

Hotels have a horrible rep for bed bugs. With my current job, i'm in a different hotel up to 10 nights a month and I recently noticed bed bugs in my apartment! Those little bastards must have hitched a ride in my luggage. Is this pretty common amongst pilots doing multi-day pairings?

You poor bugger! I spend a fair amount of time in hotels, but generally for multi-day stays; still, I make sure that prior to putting my bags down etc, I strip the sheets off the bed, and carefully inspect the mattress and box spring..

[Meatservo]

I do the same thing. Fortunately I haven't been on too many overnight trips lately, but with the recent resurgence in bedbugs I have been worried about it. A guy needs to find out whether his company has his back or not when he refuses accommodation due to the presence of bedbugs. I brought it up once and had the distinct impression I wasn't being taken seriously. It would be serious enough if you wound up with them in your house. It's almost like a disease, in the sense that they can make your life miserable and are expensive and difficult to get rid of, and in that sense it's an occupational hazard and needs to be discussed.

Really, it should be a conversation that a pilot who does lots of overnight trips has with his or her employer to work out a solution before it happens. I for one will always inspect carefully for bed bugs and will not stay if there are any. So then what?

[house]

This problem is costing me $900 to get taken care of professionally. Not cool!

I recommend that anyone staying in hotels should inspect the bed prior to each stay. Also, keep clothes and luggage away from your bed!

[Hawkerflyer]

Hotels have a horrible rep for bed bugs. With my current job, i'm in a different hotel up to 10 nights a month and I recently noticed bed bugs in my apartment! Those little bastards must have hitched a ride in my luggage. Is this pretty common amongst pilots doing multi-day pairings?

You poor bugger! I spend a fair amount of time in hotels, but generally for multi-day stays; still, I make sure that prior to putting my bags down etc, I strip the sheets off the bed, and carefully inspect the mattress and box spring..

+1

[snoman]

I've always wondered if anyone experienced this. One of my family members spends so much time on the road in her job, she is totally freaked out about it. So much so that her husband built a box with a heater in it that when they come home from any hotel, they put their luggage in there for a bunch of hours to cook them out. Some tips about them though, is for sure, strip the beds and check for bugs especially at the bottom check, that's where they hide, and under the mattress. Check any couches or upholstered chairs under the cushions and in the crevices, and keep your suitcase, clothes, shoes on hard surfaces, like the table or desk. When you get home, get all of your clothes in the drier for a while, heat kills them, cold doesn't. And I've heard from an Asian friend of mine that they always put drops of tea tree oil on bottoms of their beds before they go to bed in the hotels, as bed bugs don't like it. It's a lot of messing around every hotel night, but better than taking them home! The internet is full of stuff on bed bugs... Good Luck!

[Meatservo]

I'm still curious as to whether anyone has had a serious conversation with their employers about what action they are expected to take upon discovering bedbugs at a company-arranged hotel. I'm inclined to think of it as a health and safety issue, personally.

I can well imagine a manager, from a safe distance, not being willing to take the issue any more seriously than a pilot complaining about there being blackflies or mosquitoes on the ramp area at a northern airport, but the issue is much more serious than that, because these insects infest your belongings and continue to bother you and your family for a long time. It might not seem serious to an employer that you are complaining about "bugs", but it is actually very serious.

[imarai]

Although parasitic, they just aren't that serious. Yes, they suck your blood, causing itch, small sores, and possible allergic symptoms in some people, but the largest effect is psychological. (Your legs look just horrible at the spa). Hardly a vector for disease, unlike the cook at your pub, or the recirculated air in the cabin from Varadero to Montreal. What is interesting is bed bugs were almost eradicated in developed countries by the early 1950s. So what happened? You tell me your politically incorrect story first. Also, their main predators are cockroaches, ants and spiders. Better off with the bed bugs, or no bugs at all.

[hawker driver]

I'm still curious as to whether anyone has had a serious conversation with their employers about what action they are expected to take upon discovering bedbugs at a company-arranged hotel. I'm inclined to think of it as a health and safety issue, personally.

.

Our company issued a policy to have the crew check out of the hotel ASAP and go to another hotel.

They don't want us to bring the bugs in our luggage into the aircraft and get into the seats, pillows or blankets.

I did find a mouse in my room one night and was able to get a video of it running around. The manager almost $*** herself when I mentioned that I was going to be posing the video on You Tube. ( I however didn't )

[ea306]

Do they crawl sideways? Might not be bugs....lol

[Go Juice]

Beware of the crotch crickets!!!

[Meatservo]

Although parasitic, they just aren't that serious. Yes, they suck your blood, causing itch, small sores, and possible allergic symptoms in some people, but the largest effect is psychological. (Your legs look just horrible at the spa). Hardly a vector for disease, unlike the cook at your pub, or the recirculated air in the cabin from Varadero to Montreal. What is interesting is bed bugs were almost eradicated in developed countries by the early 1950s. So what happened? You tell me your politically incorrect story first. Also, their main predators are cockroaches, ants and spiders. Better off with the bed bugs, or no bugs at all.

What happened is that the pesticides used to keep them in check were banned. What's politically incorrect about that? And it IS serious, because if I know they're there I won't sleep, AND they travel to your house and set up shop there and everywhere in between, and keep biting you, unlike cockroaches, ants and spiders. At least when you squash a spider, even if it did bite you, a million of his buddies aren't waiting in the mattress to swarm out and attack you as soon as the lights are out, infest your luggage and be your new BFFs until you shell out a grand to have them removed from your house, only to have it happen again at the next lousy hotel you stay at. I prefer almost any other creepy-crawly, thanks, except maybe camel spiders.

[yycflyguy]

Always put your luggage on the metal stands that are provided in the rooms. They can't crawl up the metal legs to hitch a ride in your luggage. They are very costly and difficult to remove from your house if you bring them home.

[complexintentions]

It's definitely an occupational hazard. It isn't just the hotels, you might be surprised to find that the fumigators are sent regularly to the crew rest compartments of our aircraft to treat our bunks as well. We have almost 20,000 crew now (flight deck + cabin crew) and I don't know of anyone who hasn't had to deal with bedbugs. As mentioned, it isn't pleasant but it isn't life-threatening either. I'd be more worried about malaria or, if you lead a *ahem* more adventurous lifestyle, Hep C or HIV...bedbugs hardly register.

And yes, the key is to keep your luggage isolated using the stands provided. The love to hitch a ride in your clothing back home.

[Taiser]

You can check or add a hotel with bedbugs on this site...

http://bedbugregistry.com/

I never book anywhere I havn'et been before unless I check it. It's a scary read too, and spreading like wildfire. Apparently the only thing keeping them in check was DDT which is now banned everywhere.