Using CPAP on board airline - battery

[sburke91]

Be careful when using any xPAP that requires 24v of power with a 12v battery and DC/DC converter. I've found that the battery can drop below the minimum voltage level the converter expects, when more than 50% of the battery capacity remains, causing it to shut down. I experienced this with the Freedom L-Ion battery and the Airmini's DC-DC converter. I've since switched to the Medistrom 24v battery and had good results on multiple flights.

[Apapman]

Thanks, I have purchased and received a Medistrom Pilot 24 and will be trying it out at home very soon. From all of the input received it appears to be the best solution for my CPAP machine. Have been using a CPAP for over 10 years now and am on my 3rd machine (Resmed S8, S9 S10). So far the S10 has been the quietest and best. Got to the point where I have a very hard time sleeping without it. My next trip involves over 20 hours in the air each way so I figured a battery would certainly help if unable to use the inflight plug.

[Apapman]

Update: As my wife and I were amazed at the myriad requests from Qatar (including completing a “Qatar Doctor Form”) l finally called their customer support number. It appears that my request to use my CPAP in business class triggered a “needs oxygen during the entire flight” scenario via my CPAP. After telling them when I would use it they replied “you only use it when you sleep?” and said the Qatar Doctor Form would no longer be required. So in the future I will try to better describe what my CPAP is used for and possibly avoid the mix-up I encountered this time. IMHO the customer service agents handling medical request like oxygen have no idea what a CPAP does and therefore confuse it with an oxygen concentrator. Maybe even just keep my mouth shut and just bring it on board and use it discretely.