[Valencian]

I recently travelled from London to Hong Kong in first class, seat 1A, on Cathay Pacific flight CX252, which departed LHR in late August and as a seasoned traveller I firstly congratulate the airline for good in-flight service. However towards the end of the flight I started to become aware of slight itchiness and bite like marks appearing on my face and arms but thought little of it at the time. Following my connecting flight to Bangkok I was additionally aware of red blotches beginning to appear around the bites on my arms, and now also my neck, hands and ankles. A day after my flight and with more bites and blotches having become obvious I was becoming concerned and sought medical advice. After explanation I was told that I had bed bug or flea bites, and was offered antihistamine cream and advised to use delousing shampoo and to make sure that all my clothes from the flight were washed at a high temperature as the bugs, the source of the problem, can be highly contagious and difficult to get rid of.

Difficult to believe that after flying with a premier airline and in a premier seat that I should end up feeling embarrassed about my bitten facial appearance and having to take such drastic cleaning action due to parasites in the airlines bedding and / or seating.

The following day I emailed Cathay Pacific's customer service manager to inform the airline of the situation and told them that I believed that they needed to take action to prevent other passengers from having to suffer the same disgusting experience and for their information attached a photo of some of the bites I was suffering from.

My email was passed down the chain and I received a message back from the airline very quickly, only a couple of days later, informing me that they had checked my seat and found no infestation, and informing me how good their benchmarked standards of hygiene were and suggesting that if there were bugs and parasites on the aircraft they must have been brought on by another passenger, ie, not their fault but a passengers' fault.

Needless to say I was disappointed with the airline's view as I see long-haul travel like a flying hotel, passengers eat, drink, are entertained and sleep on flights and I believe airlines need to observe the same hygiene standards as premier hotels, which is clearly a matter Cathay Pacific don't agree with me on.

I have no doubt, as Cathay Pacific states, that the infestation was brought on to the flight by a passenger, what annoys me is that the airline's standards of cleaning aren't good enough to prevent this disgusting situation from passing from one passenger to another. What else was lurking in my Cathay Pacific seat?

I have travelled on thousands of flights and on tens of airlines and fortunately this is my first experience of this disgusting situation and I really hope the last.