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TripKinetics
How to travel, fly, and keep moving safely while your body is still healing from surgery or injury.
Recovery on the move: flying, walking, and healing after an operation.

Clearance, insurance and logistics

Departure Lounge · 2 threads

Fit-to-fly letters, medical clearance forms, declaring surgery to insurers, and airport assistance.

Once the medical question is settled, the paperwork starts, and this is where it gets compared. Fit-to-fly letters, the airline medical desk, telling an insurer about an operation without the premium tripling, booking assistance through an airport when you are not usually someone who needs it: none of it is hard once you have seen someone else do it, and that is what these threads are for.

Getting the paperwork right before you travel

The thread that keeps helping people is the one that separates two things travellers muddle: the airline deciding whether it will carry you, and your surgeon confirming that you personally are fit to fly. They are different jobs with different documents, and knowing which is which stops a lot of last-minute panic at the desk.

How the medical clearance process and the fit-to-fly letter actually work is in medical clearance to fly after surgery, and the reasons a post-op travel claim gets refused, almost always an undeclared operation, are in travel insurance after surgery. Do the declaring and the letter early, because the one thing every regret in these threads has in common is leaving it too late.

Start a thread if you want a second pair of eyes on what your insurer is asking or what your letter should say. Several people have caught a gap this way with days to spare.