A British Airways passenger, Heather Szilagyi, 38, claims that she and her 7-year-old daughter were bitten severely by bed bugs while on a recent flight from Vancouver to Heathrow.

Szilagyi says that she saw the bed bugs “crawling over her seat” but the cabin crew would not allow her or her daughter to change seats.

She told The Sun:

“It was about half-an-hour to an hour into the flight I saw one. It was coming out of the back of the TV screen.

“Our food came out and I went to put the tray down on my lap. I saw what was maybe a flax seed – but it started moving – it was a bug.

“Once we got to the Airbnb that we were staying in, we went to sleep. My daughter had a few bites on her thighs but when she woke up she was covered, she had them all over. It was just so bad and awful, my daughter was bleeding.”

A BA spokesman said incidents of bedbugs on aircraft are very rare, but do happen ‘occasionally’ and are dealt with seriously.

For more information on this story, go to The Sun.