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It'll take you that long to get through TSA
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You could decide to wait for 12 hours before your flight, and have an estimated 1 percent risk of Definite DCS and approximately 2 percent risk of Ambiguous DCS. If you want to keep your level of risk at zero, then don't dive or don't fly. Every time you dive, you are subjecting yourself to a risk of DCS. No tables guarantee absolute safety.
In making decisions about risk, you can look to existing guidelines and practical experience for clues, such as the 12-hour flying-after-diving guideline. The estimated DCS probability for this surface interval is about 1 percent. Another clue is the estimated probability for a 55-minute dive to 60 feet. The estimated risk of DCS is 0.5-1.0 percent for this dive. We have far to go before we are comfortable with our estimates of DCS probability, but the information we've gathered thus far is already making decompression safety less mysterious.
If these decisions seem arbitrary to you, keep in mind that there is no "right" or "wrong" when deciding whether a profile is "safe" or "unsafe." Whatever preflight surface interval you choose, whether by guess or by probability estimate, there will be some DCS risk - there is no way to avoid it. Our goal at DAN is to develop information that can help you, the diver, make these choices as rationally as possible.
Whose recommendation? Not DAN's or any other recognized dive organization I know of. DAN has had the 18 hours after multiple days of diving for 10 years that I can remember.I do not dive the day before flying but that's my policy. The recommendation is a 24 hour no fly time which assumes you have been doing multiple dives over many days.
Whose recommendation? Not DAN's or any other recognized dive organization I know of. DAN has had the 18 hours after multiple days of diving for 10 years that I can remember.