Clay and his 3 boys were kicked off a flight after staff 'publicly examined' their scalps.

Head lice is a frustrating fact of life for parents of school-aged children.

One morning, you send them off to school and the next, you’re sitting in the bath with a restless kid combing wriggling parasites out of their hair.

One family learnt just how inconvenient head lice can be when their six-year-old happened to scratch his head while on board an international flight on their way home from a European holiday.

Clay Travis and his wife took their three sons - aged nine, six and two - on holiday to London and Paris. But on their way home to the US, they made the unwelcome discovery.

"On Saturday my family flew back from Paris to Minneapolis. From Minneapolis we were scheduled to connect to our flight to Nashville and arrive home on Saturday afternoon," the father-of-three explained on his blog, Outkick The Coverage.

"Except Delta Airlines refused to allow my family to board the connecting flight in Minneapolis and insisted we leave the airport immediately after we exited customs. Why? Because my six-year-old son found out he had lice halfway over the Atlantic Ocean."

After his six-year-old was found scratching his head while waiting to use the plane's bathroom, several flight attendants realised the child has head lice, meaning the family were to be refused entry on their connecting flight home to Nashville.

"When we landed in Minneapolis, the entire plane emptied and a flight attendant who looked a bit like Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest approached us," Clay said.

After being escorted off the plane, Clay's son was subjected to a public examination, with medical staff combing through the child's hair in the middle of the customs area, much to the boy's embarrassment.

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“This seemed strange to me — is it really airline policy now to conduct physical examinations of six-year-olds?" Clay wrote.

“My six-year-old pulled me aside and said, “It’s all my fault that we can’t go home, daddy. I’m sorry that I have lice. He was nearly crying when he said it. Which, if you’re a parent, just breaks your heart. Thanks, Delta.

"... I never in my wildest imagination thought my family would get pulled off an airline flight for anything, much less my six year old having lice."

Despite the family's best efforts to fight the decision, they were left with no other option but to find alternative travel arrangements home, which cost them "over a thousand dollars".

Although we can sympathise with Clay's feelings of the the situation being "totally mishandled", was the airline within their rights to refuse a passenger infected with a highly contagious bug?

We'll let you decide.

Do you think the airline made a fair decision in not allowing Clay's family to fly?