Travel Risk: Bed Bug Bites on Air India flights

Air India grounded 2 of its planes after passengers complained of being covered in gruesome bedbug bites after flights

AIR INDIA Boeing 787-8 lands at Frankfurt airport.

shutterstock/Vytautas Kielaitis

Air India grounded two aircraft operating between Mumbai and Newark after passengers complained of being bitten by bedbugs on two flights last week.
Passengers posted pictures and vented their frustrations on Twitter.
The airline said that affected aircraft have been fumigated and its upholstery overhauled.

Air India temporarily grounded two aircraft operating between Mumbai and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey after passengers complained of being bitten by bedbugs last week.

Business class passengers on board Flight 144 reported bedbug bites on two separate segments last week.

Air India was not immediately available for comment on the matter. However, in a statement to NBC News, the airline said that it is “deeply concerned with a few reports of ‘bugs’ causing inconvenience to its esteemed passengers.”

“The issue has been viewed seriously and every possible step is being taken to closely inspect and further strengthen our system at every level to ensure that such isolated incidents of passenger discomfiture do not affect our consistent performance,” the airline added.

While the origin of the insects on the plane is not yet known, Air India has worked to exterminate them from its aircraft.

“Experienced experts have carried out extensive service on the aircraft from fumigation to overhaul of the upholstery, seat covers, carpets etc to ensure that passengers keep enjoying their in-flight experience with us as always without any complaint of inconvenience,” the airline said in a statement.

Two aircraft used to operate the Mumbai-Newark route were grounded one day each, an airline official told the Hindustan Times.

Multiple Air India passengers took to Twitter to express both their frustration and disgust of being bitten by the insects while flying.

“Just arrived in New York on Air India 144 business class with family. All our seats infested with bed bugs,” one passenger complained.

Another passenger wrote that his wife and three children were on Air India 144 from Newark to Mumbai and “have bedbug bites all of their body.”

“Is this what we paid $10,000 for?” the passenger complained.

Air India, which is India’s national airline, has been looking for a buyer since being put up for sale by the Indian government in March.

The airline hasn’t turned a profit since 2007 and has 27,000 employees along with $5 billion in debt. While a deadline has been extended to facilitate a purchase, a buyer has yet to emerge.

Reported by Business Insider on 26 July 2018.

Travel Risk: Inflight Depressurisation causes Ryanair flight to plummet 28,000 feet

Ryanair flight FR7312 from Dublin to Dublin to Zadar, Croatia was forced to make an emergency landing at Germany’s Frankfurt-Hahn airport after the plane’s cabin lost pressure.

33 passengers hospitalized after Ryanair flight plummets almost 30,000 feet

Over 30 passengers were hospitalized, with some complaining about bleeding from their ears, after a Ryanair flight plummeted 28,000 feet in less than 10 minutes on Friday, according to authorities and flight tracking software.

“I can safely say it was the most terrifying thing I ever experienced,” passenger Roxanne Brownlee told ABC News.

A spokesperson from Ryanair said an “inflight depressurization” on the plane, which was carrying 189 people, from Dublin, Ireland, to Zadar, Croatia, caused oxygen masks to deploy. The plane made an emergency landing at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport in Germany.

“The oxygen masks just fell down in front of us — we were given no context, there was no announcement,” said Brownlee. “We were all kind of scrambling trying to put the oxygen masks on and people were screaming, crying and shouting.”

When the plane began to plummet, Brownlee and another passenger, Sara Sihelnik, said they had no updates from the hostesses or captain.

“It was that moment we were plummeting that we were thinking, ‘This is it, we’re going to die,’” said Brownlee.

Once the plane arrived at the airport, 33 people were taken to the hospital “to be treated for headaches and earaches and nausea,” according to authorities. Sky News reported that some people complained they were bleeding from their ears.

Brownlee and Sihelnik described the treatment they received after landing as “disgraceful.”

“They brought in about 100 burgers, for 189 of us there. They said elderly and families with small children can sleep on cots in the basement, the rest of us was just sort of left floating around,” said Brownlee. “So we were all awake upwards of 36 hours of the entire ordeal — just completely exhausted, shattered and I would just say shocked with the treatment that we received from Ryanair.”

The flight path shows the plane falling thousands of feet in altitude.

According to a Ryanair spokesperson, “Customers were provided with refreshment vouchers and hotel accommodation was authorised, however there was a shortage of available accommodation.”

On Saturday, another Ryanair flight took a majority of the passengers to their destination in Croatia. Out of the 33 people admitted to the hospital, 22 were released and bused to Croatia because they were told not to fly.

Reported by ABC News on 15 July 2018.

Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, according to the International Air Transport Association. It flies in 37 countries and carried 130 million passengers last year.

Pilot smoking an e-cigarette causes Air China flight to plunge 6,500 meters

‘Vaping’ pilot caused Air China plane to plunge 6,500m

A co-pilot smoking an e-cigarette on an Air China flight caused the plane to start a rapid emergency descent, investigators have said.

They say he tried to hide the fact that he was smoking but accidentally shut off the air-conditioning, causing oxygen levels to fall.

The crew on Tuesday’s flight from Hong Kong to the city of Dalian released oxygen masks and brought the plane more than 6,500m (21,000ft) lower.

It later returned to cruising altitude.

An initial probe by China’s Civil Aviation Administration in China has shown that the co-pilot tried to turn off a fan to stop smoke reaching the passenger cabin without telling the captain, but turned off the air-conditioning unit instead.

Passengers say they were told to fasten their seat belts as the plane had to descend.

Aircraft passengers with oxygen masks dropped

The regulator’s safety officer Qiao Yibin said the crew had to perform emergency measures, dropping oxygen masks until they could figure out the problem.

If a plane loses cabin pressure, the pilot has to bring the aircraft to a lower altitude to keep crew and passengers safe.

Once they saw that the air conditioning had been turned off, they reactivated it and brought the flight back to its normal altitude.

Authorities are reportedly investigating the cause “in greater detail”, examining both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder to determine precisely what caused the incident.

The airline promised a “zero-tolerance” approach to crew misbehaviour on Chinese social media site Weibo.

Chinese flight regulations prohibit all flight crew from smoking, and banned passengers from using e-cigarettes on board in 2006.

But there have been accusations of pilots smoking on board other Chinese flights, including in 2015 when the state-run radio spoke to passengers on a Hong Kong-Beijing flight who claimed to smell strong smoke coming from the cockpit.

Reported by BBC on 13 July 2018.

Travel Risk: Bug Bites that cause Chagas’ disease

The triatomine bug mainly sucks blood from victims’ faces and often defecates in the wound, especially around the eyes and lips where the skin is thinner

‘Disease like AIDS’ can follow bug bites

By Zheng Caixiong in Guangzhou

A forest bug clambers on a fern in a garden outside Moscow on June 27, 2017. (YURI KADOBNOV / AFP)

The Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention has posted a reward for the capture of triatomine bugs as it works to prevent an outbreak of Chagas’ disease by identifying cases early.

Chagas’ disease, which has an incubation period of between 20 and 30 years, is “a new disease like AIDS”, the center said.

Chagas’ disease, which has an incubation period of between 20 and 30 years, is “a new disease like AIDS”

“The campaign is expected to offer early diagnosis and better treatment to patients in the coming months,” the center said in a statement published on its WeChat account on Thursday.

Those who provide the center with triatomine bugs – dead or alive – will receive a reward of 8 yuan (US$1.20) per specimen, it said.

Chagas’ disease most often causes flu-like symptoms like fever, facial swelling, body aches and vomiting. However, 20-30 percent of those infected with the disease can contract chronic conditions, including inflammation of the heart, enlargement of the esophagus and colon, blood clotting and even sudden death. It can lie dormant in a human body for decades.

An official from the center said no Chagas’ disease cases have been reported in Guangzhou so far, but the city is a place for investigating the Chagas’ disease in Guangdong province.

The triatomine bug mainly sucks blood from victims’ faces and often defecates in the wound, especially around the eyes and lips where the skin is thinner, the center said in its statement. An adult bug is usually about 2.5 centimeters long.

The bug is a carrier of the disease, which claims thousands of lives each year in Central and South America. With increasing globalization, cases of the disease have been reported in North America, Europe, Oceania and Japan in recent years, the statement said.

“Chagas’ disease might break out in the city if many bugs are present, so it is important to find the bugs and identify victims early to help control infection rates,” it said.

“Currently there is no vaccine to prevent Chagas’ disease, and there are no specific medicines effective to cure the disease when it reaches a late stage,” the statement said.

Triatomine bugs mainly live in cracks in walls and stones, but have also been found in forests, fields, animal pens and chicken coops. The bugs usually emerge at night to feed.

People who capture the bugs are urged to put them in sealed bottles before taking them to a CDC office in the city.

Reported by China Daily on 10 July 2018.