How long do you before flying do you not dive

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

dvleemin

Contributor
Messages
525
Reaction score
1
Location
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Hi,
Just curious as to how long before flying you make sure you're out of the water? When I was in cuba in Oct, some guy was actually going to go for a deep dive 80' before he was flying. Seemed very foolish to me.

I have heard of people doing shallower (60') dives until around 12 hours before the flight. Is there any problem with that?

Darryl
 
Well, commerical airliners (while ussually flying at 30K ft) pressureize the cabin to a relative pressure of 10,000 ft. the atmospheric pressure at 10,000 ft, is .675 ATA.

So (in theory) if you take the 'altitude diving' precaucions when planning your dive and dive it at sea level assuming that you are at 10,000ft. you should be fine as soon as you surface.

ROUGHLY the theoretical depths you would plan with at an altitude of 10,000 ft are 150% of the accual depth. So an accual dive to 60' should be planned and treated as a dive to 90' As long as you stay in the NDL for a 90' dive at sea level while only diving to 60', you could theoreticly surface to an atmospheric pressure of .675 ATA, which is what you would experience in the cabin during your flight.

DISCLAIMER NOTE: I've never tried this and don't recommend anyone else to. I know nothing about dive medicine.
 
Interesting,
Thats a bit over my head - anyone care to aggree or dispute this?

Just of the top of my head, one thing you have to remember is that should your flight lose cabin pressure, you might be in trouble. Of course thats an awefully remote possibility.

Darryl
 
Originally posted by dvleemin

Just of the top of my head, one thing you have to remember is that should your flight lose cabin pressure, you might be in trouble. Of course thats an awefully remote possibility.

Darryl

yea, but if you lose cabin pressure, the 100% O2 mask drops down!
Instant deco stop!:wink: :D

Also, if you lose cabin pressure, you've got bigger problems than nitrogen, I think... of couse, DIR states that one should always look ahead and plan for *all* possible senarios. :wink:
 
Altitude tables assume you have had acclimation time before using them. In the flying after diving problem, you are "saturated" at sea level plus whatever your diving activity has added.
There is a table in the NOAA diving manual on page 4-28 that gives times to wait before ascent based on your final repetitive group (Navy tables) and the altitude to which you will ascend. Commercial airliners are pressurized to 8,000 feet MSL, by the way, not 10,000.
DAN current research says a minimum of 12 hours after a single dive, and a minimum of 17 hours after multiple dives, with a recommendation of 24 hours or more.
I personally shoot for 24 hours from surface to sky.
Rick
 
on this topic this month. It starts by profiling two individuals who experienced DCS after flying.

One of the key points that the article makes is that many people ignore early warning signs of DCS and go ahead and fly. So it is not actually the flying that brought on the onset of DCS but simply made it worse.

I believe in at least a 24 hour surface interval after a repetitive dive day. This is the US Air Force standard that I was brought up with. Both the Navy and DAN are somewhat more lax.

Check out the article in Dive Training. It is a good read.

:bunny: KC_Scubabunny :bunny:
 
The only time I fly is for a dive trip with diving multiple dives a day for multiple days. So that means 24 hours from surface to lift off. I know some divers that use the fudge factor of shallow dives within 12-18 hrs but to me that's asking for trouble sooner or later.

I'll be safe with 24 hours....the alternative is unacceptable!
 
For multiple dives over multiple days -the basic rule is no flying for 24 hours.

To date I've never broken that rule.... I had thought -- very briefly of doing so on my trip next week just to get in one more day of diving (just one more I thought) -- hit me over the head for even thinking it:eek: . Nope not me... last dive for me will be Friday -- no diving for me on Saturday.
 
That rule has changed over the years. I personally wait 24 hours, but when I learned to dive, the rule was wait until you're a D diver on the tables. That was the US Navy tables, the RDP wasn't even a gleam.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom