Yet Another International CPAP Travel Question

[greyhound]

Someone (forget who) told me that, when returning from England (Gatwick) to the US, your CPAP counted as your one permissable carry on bag. Obviously, this differs from the US rules and is also different from my experiences traveling to France and Japan.

Any one have any experience traveling from Gatwick to the US?

[tillymarigold]

Someone (forget who) told me that, when returning from England (Gatwick) to the US, your CPAP counted as your one permissable carry on bag. Obviously, this differs from the US rules and is also different from my experiences traveling to France and Japan.

Any one have any experience traveling from Gatwick to the US?

I've not done so personally but I have researched it as my husband is from the UK and we're planning a vacation there next year, and AFAIK those are the rules when flying out of any UK airport: one carry-on item, period. Only exception is something like a coat (as in, you can carry both a bag and a coat).

I just bought a set of luggage that has one of those annoying small rolling suitcases that's just small enough to be a carryon item and still big enough to annoy everyone on the plane. Then I can fit my whole CPAP bag into the carryon and put other stuff in it also.

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[zzzzzz!!]

An acquaintance recently traveled through there and confirmed that it's still one carry-on only, whether it be laptop bag, suitcase, CPAP, or whatever, and the maximum size allowed is 56 x 45 x 25 cm (22 x 17.7 x 9.8 inches). I've also heard they're quite strict about the size limits!

[echo]

Ohhhh yes the English airports are very bad in that respect, and they WILL make you stick to the 1 carry-on rule, no matter what.

But, that's only when you go past security. The airlines themselves will still let you take on the normal number of carry-ons.

There are airport staff usually before the security, and they give you all sorts of tips to help you consolidate everything into one carry-on, it's really funny.

So what i've done before is take my laptop out of the laptop bag (or CPAP, etc, since it needs to be screened separately), stuff my purse into the laptop bag, and voila. Or take a large cloth bag so that you can put all your carry-ons into that when going through security and separate it back out again afterwards. But zzzzz!! is right about the size limit:
http://www.gatwickairport.com/portal/pa ... e120a____/

[greyhound]

Thanks for the feedback. Guess I'll have to stuff my one suitcase a bit more for the return flight.

[billbolton]

If you are travelling with Britsh Airways and you tell them well before hand that you will need to take a CPAP machine on board, you will probably be able to take the CPAP machine as an additional carry-on through the security checks at UK Interntional gateway airports, for an International flight

You need to keep telling the security check people that its a medical appratus you need to use in flight and that the airline knows about it and has approved use of it. In my case they definitely did check with BA on that, but then did let me take it through.

I have no idea what happens if you are on some other airline, but I suspect the same would apply to QANTAS, as they pretty much operate in lock-step with BA procedures in the UK.

Cheers,

Bill

[qlm]

Just came back from N Z aand australia, on qantas they made possible to use on airplane, also while there cpap would work but not the humidifier.
It was considered 1 carryon. with the size limit. had adaptor

[guest1]

We recently returned from the UK and were allowed to tote the cpap machine and a laptop bag onboard.