Over the past few years the levels of bed bug activity on commercial airlines has steadily increased. This pattern of activity is set to continue for the foreseeable future. Some countries have cited bed bugs as potential threats to biosecurity and have appeared in national codes of best practice. We have developed specific scent detection systems to detect infestations on commercial aircraft ranging from planned proactive screening and range of infestation detection through to confirmation of eradication and assisting in the repatriation of grounded aircraft.
Bed bugs can be incredibly destructive in terms of a carriers’ reputations. Our systems of detection and management have been designed specifically to manage and mitigate these risks. Although our core area of business is the detection and management of bed bug infestations, our scope of activity encompasses a diverse range of services to protect our client's reputation.
In today's social media age disgruntled passengers choose to report activity on sites such as upgrd.com rather than raise their concerns with the airline. For this reason we have invested heavily in an online reputation management system that alerts us to any postings or articles concerning our clients. This enables us to inform clients of any forum traffic regarding them and offer advice on management of these postings.
Why employ Dogs to detect Bed bugs?
Bed bug sniffing dogs are trained to work for food, toys and love, not profits. Bed bug detecting canines can search a standard hotel room in minutes with pin-point accuracy. A dogs’ odour image is significantly more complex than a human’s perception of photographs. They have been employed successfully to detect mold, termites, drugs, arson components even counterfeit DVDs. Use of bed bug detecting canines has been acknowledged in courts around the world as an effective tool. In the USA scent detection dogs are acknowledge by the courts as scientific instruments. Bed bug dogs are accurate over 90% of the time and identify bed bug harborage in walls, under floors and other inaccessible areas. Humans are traditionally limited to visual inspections rearing accurate results 30% of the time. Humans can take days to screen an aircraft dogs can screen a B747 in 2hours and a A320 in 30mins these times can be halved for fast turnaround as all our units contain multiple dogs and two handelers.
All of our dogs are trained specifically for the unique scent profile of live bed bugs. None of our dogs have ever been trained for other disciplines like drug or explosives detection or search and rescue. Our handlers are simultaneously put through a rigorous exercise with carefully selected animals. Our unique training regime is performed daily without fail. We are in a unique position in Europe being the only company with sufficient trained animals to allow us to remove dogs from service without effecting service to our clients.
