She didn’t realize she’d be flying roach.
A woman has sworn off flying Spirit Airlines after finding cockroaches in her seating area during a recent flight, as revealed in an X video with nearly 8 million views.
“Never again will I fly @SpiritAirlines,” the passenger — who goes by @symonebeez — wrote in the caption while describing the bugged airplane. “I’ve flown over 500,000 miles on Delta and have never in my life seen roaches on a plane. This is crazy.”
In the footage, which was reportedly taken on Mother’s Day, two separate roaches can be seen scuttling up the bulkhead in front of the horrified flyer.
“I ended up in the big seat tickets, I did not think it was going to come with these big roaches as well,” the aghast traveler quipped in a TikTok video detailing her mile-high roach motel.
And while she remained mum during the initial palmetto bug enc-roach-ment, the flyer finally spoke up after seeing her second six-legged seatmate.
Unfortunately, the flight attendants didn’t seem to share her concern.
“I started to talk to the flight attendant [and] say ‘hey, there’s roaches in here…is there something you can do to clean it up?” the TikTokker recalled. “And he was just like ‘ah’ and that was it and then he just went back to his seat.
“He literally did not care,” recalled the content creator, who said this nonchalance inspired her to repost the video to Twitter.
Viewers were horrified over the alleged infestation.
“I would’ve screamed so loud they would’ve had no choice but to land that plane QUICK FAST,” wrote one appalled commenter, while another said, “at that point all my belongings gotta be burned to high heaven.”
“You was in the Tubi Sequal to snakes on a plane,” quipped a third. “I’m sick of these MF Roaches on this MF plane”
“They need follow up with free flight(s) because this is nasty work,” said another.
According to a follow-up X post, Spirit addressed the situation in a message to the flyer, writing: “We sincerely apologize for what happened on your trip. We care about your satisfaction and want to make this right.”
They offered her a $60 credit to use toward one of their flights, per the traveler, who said she refused as she “won’t be flying Spirit again.”
While these creepy crawly stowaways might seem like a major oversight, some flight experts have pointed out that they likely originated from the passengers and not the aircraft.
Gary Leff at flight blog One Mile At A Time shared a post by an entomology expert and corporate exec who was contracted by Delta Air Lines for an unspecified project.
“The main area that causes fliers to see bugs on the plane [is] from the overhead luggage,” the expert read. “If a traveler has bed bugs or roaches in their carry-on, inevitably some may get out and potentially [be] seen by other travelers.
They added, “The issue arises because of the clientele of the plane. The more individuals who live in roach-infested homes/apartments, the more likely they are to carry bugs on the plane and for a few of those insects to get out of their carry-on and scurry around for others to see.”
However, they argued that the blame still lay with Spirit as they could’ve been lax with their pest control policies.
They suggested that while Delta will “shut a plane down from flight if a major issue is found,” other airlines might not “allocate much money to pest control.”
