Flying With a Health Condition
Most air travel advice assumes a healthy passenger. It tells you to arrive two hours early, drink water, and stretch your legs. It does not tell you whether your insulin pump will over-deliver on takeoff, whether your pacemaker will set off the metal detector, or how many spare batteries your oxygen concentrator needs for a fourteen hour flight.
This section covers the specific, practical detail that general travel advice leaves out. Every guide is written for one condition, answering the questions people actually have before they board.
A note on what this is: These are practical travel guides, not medical advice. Fitness to fly is a clinical judgement that only your treating doctor can make. Every guide here recommends speaking to your own doctor before booking, and none of them replace that conversation.
Before You Book
Some questions come up regardless of condition. These guides cover the ground everyone needs.
Medical Clearance and Fit to Fly Assessments
What “fit to fly” actually means, when airlines require clearance, and how the assessment process works.
Understanding Cabin Pressure
Aircraft cabins are pressurised to the equivalent of roughly 5,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level. What that means for oxygen levels, gas expansion, and why it matters more for some conditions than others.
Airport Security With Medical Devices and Implants
Metal detectors, body scanners, hand searches, implant identification cards, and what you are entitled to request.
Medical Documentation and Doctor’s Letters
What to carry, what it should say, and when airlines require their own forms rather than a letter.
Medication Across Time Zones
Adjusting dosing schedules when you cross time zones, and what to do on flights that cross the international date line.
Flying With Specific Conditions
Cardiac and Circulatory
- Flying With a Pacemaker or ICD
- Flying After a Heart Attack
- Flying With Heart Failure
- Flying With Atrial Fibrillation
- Flying With High Blood Pressure
- Flying After Cardiac Surgery
- Flying With a History of Blood Clots or DVT
Respiratory
- Flying With COPD
- Flying With Asthma
- Flying With Pulmonary Fibrosis
- Flying With Supplemental Oxygen
- Flying With Sleep Apnoea and a CPAP Machine
Metabolic and Endocrine
- Travelling With Type 1 or Type 2 Diabetes
- Flying With an Insulin Pump or CGM
- Flying With Thyroid Conditions
Kidney and Digestive
- Flying With Chronic Kidney Disease and Dialysis
- Flying With Crohn’s Disease or Colitis
- Flying With a Stoma or Ostomy
Neurological
- Flying With Epilepsy
- Flying After a Stroke
- Flying With Multiple Sclerosis
- Flying With Parkinson’s Disease
- Flying With Migraine
Mobility and Musculoskeletal
- Flying After Hip or Knee Replacement
- Flying With Arthritis
- Flying With a Wheelchair
- Requesting Airport Assistance
- Flying With Osteoporosis
Mental Health
- Flying With Anxiety or Fear of Flying
- Flying With PTSD
- Flying With Depression
Sensory and Cognitive
- Flying With Low Vision or Blindness
- Flying With Hearing Loss or Hearing Aids
- Flying With Autism
- Flying With Dementia
Other
- Travelling with Severe Allergies and Anaphylaxis
- Flying While Pregnant
- Flying During Cancer Treatment
- Flying After Surgery
- Flying With a Compromised Immune System
Why This Series Exists
Airlines publish policies. Health organisations publish general advice. Neither reliably tells you the specific, practical thing you need to know three weeks before a flight at eleven at night when you cannot sleep for worrying about it.
Every guide in this series is researched from clinical guidance, airline policy documents, aviation medicine sources, and the accounts of people who have actually done it. Where the useful detail exists only in a forum thread or a conference presentation, we find it and write it down properly.
If there is a condition you would like covered that is not here yet, tell us on the Contact page.