  In this paper we study the deformed statistics and oscillator algebras of
quantum fields defined in $\kappa$-Minkowski spacetime. The twisted flip
operator obtained from the twist associated with the star product requires an
enlargement of the Poincar\'e algebra to include the dilatation generators.
Here we propose a novel notion of a fully covariant flip operator and show that
to the first order in the deformation parameter it can be expressed completely
in terms of the Poincar\'e generators alone. The $R$-matrices corresponding to
the twisted and the covariant flip operators are compared up to first order in
the deformation parameter and they are shown to be different. We also construct
the deformed algebra of the creation and annihilation operators that arise in
the mode expansion of a scalar field in $\kappa$-Minkowski spacetime. We obtain
a large class of such new deformed algebras which, for certain choice of
realizations, reduce to results known in the literature.
