Fitness to fly – not a new issue

June 30, 2009 at 8:00 pm | In Musings, Pregnancy | 1 Comment

Still feeling that I should alert pregnant women to easyJet’s timing requirement for the fitness to fly confirmation I ‘googled’ the topic, and found this from October 2008. The summary is that a woman who was 31 weeks pregnant, who had boarded an easyJet flight from Rome, was removed due to not having a fitness to fly letter which had been written within the previous 5 days, she “had flown to Rome from Bristol with the airline six days earlier with no questions asked” though. The woman then ended up being seen by a doctor, who carried out an ‘intimate examination’ and then communicated, via a translator, that the certificate he provided was not valid as she was not a registered patient. Guess what, having spent 300€ on accommodation, when they flew the following day easyJet didn’t ask for a certificate!

Reading the comments following the article came as a revelation to me. Many, many people agreed entirely with easyJet and feel that pregnant women shouldn’t fly. Some hypothesised upon the woman giving birth whilst airborne (hee hee), how it would be for the other passengers (!) if “she’d had a miscarriage, DVT” and I just loved this one from ex-cabin crew “No doubt she and her hubby will be one of those highly annoying types who take their infants on long haul flights and let them screech for hours on end expecting everyone else to tolerate it.” The really outstanding feature of the comments was the highlighting of the increased risk of DVT whilst pregnant and interpreting that as meaning that pregnant woman shouldn’t fly. Well, that’s as maybe but if you follow on from that rationale then women on HRT or those taking an oral contraceptive containing oestrogen should also not be flying. Let’s not confine ourselves to females, exclusion from flying should also be extended to anyone with heart problems, cancer, those who are obese or even just because they are male. All of these factors increase the likelihood of DVT so me thinks we should ban all obese males, and any woman past puberty. On a final note concerning DVT and the minimising of risk by airlines, do easyJet provide free water to passengers? Dehydration increases the risk of DVT.

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I am ‘one of those’ and I’m a midwife.

I’d happy sign a fitness to fly but MY concern is not the flight (altho I do wonder about a prem at 30,000 feet) but where they are going. Medical care, especially maternity care is NOT equal across the world, and I’m not even talking poorer as some countries have highly medicalised styles of care. My biggest concern is that they might be taken unwell in a country where you can’t speak the language, that you cant understand the problem, make a choice and you may have no idea what they have done because the report is in another language.

Is a long weekend break worth the risk… especially after 28 weeks? A friend went to spain when she was admitted with threatened prem lab at 26 weeks after and gastric upset.
She was a student midwife at the time and said it was the scariest experience of her life. She had no idea what was happening and no one could communicate with her. They gave her ?steroids ?antiemetic ?pain relief and to this date she has no idea. It was just irritable uterus and settled (infact babes went over as per!!) – Thank Goodness!

I think we are so desperate to be cosmopolitan and not have pregnancy stop us from doing anything but at what potential cost?
I think we need to consider advising women about hydration, learning some basic language, taking English advice line numbers to use, getting good cover on insurance and being aware of increased risk of infections, inc gastric upsets…

Comment by J***P — July 3, 2009 #

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