Curious if anyone on here has experience diving and how they managed it with flying. I have the opportunity to possibly take a position at my company as a diver and I have some concerns about flying afterward. I understand that you would still need to follow the dive table and have adequate surface time. Thanks in advance!

Jeredp,

I have been a Diver for over 35yrs and a Dive Instructor for over 20years with an extensive amount of Commercial and Search and Rescue Diving and am a Commercial Pilot. I would advise you to follow at minimum the recommenede 24hrs out of the water before any flying. Dive tables are a great item with some safety margins built in if you are in Great physical shape however once you increase your altitude you are off gassing again and it just isn't worth the risk to Dive and Fly within 24hrs. Now you can Fly and Dive, Just not Dive and Fly. Barnstormers link is right on. Follow what DAN suggests and you will be much better off. Believe me Getting a Hit from Decompression Sickness is no fun, I know and never want to experience it again.

No experience commercial, but lots diving.

The 24-hr recommendation is good, I think. At times when flying out close to or under that, I've always tried to manage my dives for shallower profiles and lower nitrogen loads toward the end.

On a related note, especially in the west- diving and driving. One could climb out of a 200' tech dive at the docks in Mukilteo, and be at the top of some pretty high stuff in hours, without ever leaving pavement. Maybe it's not a huge deal, because of the lower pressure gradient, but better safe than bent!

Then there's local diving here, where you crawl out of the water at 5k. Or 8 or 10.

Here is a different perspective for the sake of argument and for applying common sense to this question.

So diving to 30 ft is approximately equivalent to 1 atmosphere (14.7psi) of pressure if I remember correctly. Half of that is a depth of 15 ft. In air you would need to go to about 18,000 feet in an unpressurized aircraft to attain a half atmosphere or equivalent pressure change.

Point being that pressure changes in air due to changes in altitude are minimal as compared to pressure changes in water.

Look at dive decompression stop times in water. See any 24 hour deco stops? Of course not. So why is there one between diving and flying? It does not make much sense to me unless flight involves going to high altitudes in unpressurized aircraft within minutes after climbing out of the water.

Fellow commercial helo pilot I worked with went up well over 30 hours after diving - got hit with the bends and barely managed to get it on the ground before becoming incapacitated. Lucky for him there was a chamber close by. He quit diving after that as he said he never wanted to experience anything like that again.
Tom

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2. Read, research, study, mental pictures.
3. Go piss on electric fence yourself.