No Fly Times

[Sas]

Thanks for all the comments! And also the link to the research paper. It's along the lines of what I was thinking already.

 

[scubadada]

I try to have 18 hours between multiple dives and flying and try to fulfill by desat time as dictated by my computer (sometimes this is greater than 18 hours and sometimes this is even greater than 24 hours). I've occasionly cut this a little short and have gotten away with it so far. I try to do the best I can. As far as I'm concerned, the longer the better. I also do a fair amount of business travel with diving attached. I try to go early and get my diving in before I do my business.

Good diving, Craig

 

[Thalassamania]

If you'll do a multiple dive you'll need to wait 18-24 hours. If you do a shallow dive 5-7m for about 30-40 minutes similar to a DSD you should be ok to fly 3 three hours after the dive. Non multiple dives. It's better to be safe than sorry. follow give guide lines and SI stick within flying guidelines and enjoy even a shallow dive. Better than nothing.

Have fun diving and enjoy!!!

I agree with you in concept, but I am curious were you got the 3 hr SI from? Can you help me out?

 

[Sortsol]

I've cut it shorter than 18 hours and not had any issues...however, I prefer to be safe and try not to fly within 18 hours of exiting the water. Fortunately I my travel has slowed greatly this year and that's not been an issue!

I've always been interested in this topic though and I think I'm going to do some more research on this for my own edification.

 

[Thalassamania]

I've cut it shorter than 18 hours and not had any issues...however, I prefer to be safe and try not to fly within 18 hours of exiting the water. Fortunately I my travel has slowed greatly this year and that's not been an issue!

I've always been interested in this topic though and I think I'm going to do some more research on this for my own edification.

Here's a good place to start: http://www.ndc.noaa.gov/pdfs/USNDeco3.pdf

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

I've occasionly cut this a little short and have gotten away with it so far.

Now there's a deco planning tool called Ultimate Planner with no-fly time acceleration feature. It's not free and I'm biased

 

[Bombay High]

Nick, I'm with you. And I know, for example, that last year's PNW DYFO crew got off the boat and drove to the airport, after three days of four dives a day, some of them moderately deep recreational dives. I'm too liability averse to recommend that anyone else do that, but I do it, and my friends do it (including you guys!)

I have heard it said that if you get bent on an airplane, you were bent before you got on, which makes a lot of sense to me.

I remember reading an account of some research on time to fly, which indicated that technical divers could use SHORTER times to fly than recreational divers -- which has always made me wonder if the problem with flying after diving for a lot of folks is a combination of diving the wrong gas and using poor ascent procedures.

This maybe due to the fact that a lot of recreational divers are actually surfacing with a significant bubble load. Most tech divers are much more careful of their offgassing.
However I would be very cautious about violating no fly times unless necessary for an emergency.
When we come out of deco on a saturation dive, we are required to stay within an hours drive of the chamber for 36 hours and not fly for 72 hours. While this is obviously because ALL slow tissue has been saturated.

While I know this not to be the case on recreational dives and almost all tech dives, I would still not push the no fly times.

I have had to a couple of times and breathed pure O2 two hours after surfacing, and 3 hours before the flight.

 

[Bombay High]

Now there's a deco planning tool called Ultimate Planner with no-fly time acceleration feature. It's not free and I'm biased

Asser,
I have heard a lot of people talking about your new software, but no one who has actually used it. It is based on the V-Planner if my understanding is correct ?
It treats your time on the surface as a decostop breathing air and the flight pressure as the ascent to surface ?

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

Asser,
I have heard a lot of people talking about your new software, but no one who has actually used it. It is based on the V-Planner if my understanding is correct ?
It treats your time on the surface as a decostop breathing air and the flight pressure as the ascent to surface ?

It incorporates both VPM-B and Buhlmann with Gradient Factors. It doesn't aim at calculating the no-fly time. It just accelerates your pre-flight surface interval, whatever it is.

There are some screen shots (including the no-fly time accelerator) at http://www.techdivingmag.com/ultimateplanner.html

 

[ajduplessis]

Like most things scuba, it differs person to person. The best advise is to stick to the recommended time.