our pump is out of warranty . . . and so now we don’t have a back up. It seems like most people are having no issue with the scanners. My issue is with the TSA and how they’re not following their own rules, that being that people do have a choice to opt for the pat down instead of a scan.
My son has his sets on his butt (too skinny for anywhere else) so he never takes it off in public. He’s been through countless metal detectors. As for voiding the warranty, we no longer have one 
That’s another story (just went out of warranty and insurance company is being more of a tight wad than 4 years ago). I had a heated discussion with the supervisor of the TSA in Miami - he insisted the full body scan was fine - I said unless he wanted to buy us a new pump there was no way my son was going through. It just gets me when people who don’t have any idea what they’re talking about try to tell me what to do. I did a bunch of reading this am and the general consensus is that full body scans are fine. But until Animas comes out with a definitive statement, I’m playing it safe.
But you do not need to have a pat down you can do thru the metal detector and remove your insulin pump and just have the insulin pump manually inspected - this works for either the full body scan or the Metal detector scans.
Hey PC I think that you are right and Animus is justing being ultra conservative =- for years I put my Deltec cozmo thru the full nlown xray and never had a probley with it and the body scan is an infinitismal dose compared to the full blown carry on xray. anyhow i follow the conservative recomendation too. Hopefully Animus will get over it soon and make life easier for all of us. DOes anyone know Mini Med’s policy?
dick - in Miami they were randomly selecting people out for metal detector OR full body scan. I told them there - no scan for my son. He’s gone through countless metal detectors just fine. (I got selected for scan so I was separated from him). By the way, as I replied below, my son has and will NEVER take his pump off in public - he wears his sets on his butt – skinny kid – we should all be so lucky. So unless the TSA wants him to pull his pants down in public, it ain’t happening. Remember, even if you do the Full Body Scan, they can still do a pat down if they see “suspicious” stuff on the scan. It’s well documented on the internet about people who have had both.
i have a computer science degree and a background in microelectronics, you are always taught when writing specs to give yourself lots of leeway and never make claims you are not absolutely 100% sure of.
lets say medtronic/animas says it's safe to go through a full body scanner and the scanner has a 1 in a billion freak malfunction and nukes one of the chips in the pump,your pump looks fine when you exit the scanner,it still looks fine when you board the plane,however when you go to do a bolus before eating their delicious in flight meal your pump adds an extra 0 to the end of your bolus (you get 100 units of insulin when you were expecting 10) and you die on the plane. there would be a huge inquiry with the fda/faa/tsa and huge lawsuit and a ton of bad press,so even if they are 99% sure it's safe they can't publicly make any claims.
same as medtronic says you MUST use a very particular brand and model of (expensive) disposable batteries in their pumps,likely because that is the only battery they tested to 100% certainty. when infact any battery that puts out the same voltage (rechargeable or single use) will work fine but they aren't legally allowed to say it because they haven't run tests on every single brand and model of battery produced in the past 50 years (including that really obscure one that's still sealed in it's package covered in dust in your grandfather's basement)
Hello all. Lifelong type 1 but brand new Revel Minimed pump user here -- and frequent flyer. I've read this discussion, which is all over the place with contradictory advice. Also read TSA guidelines, Medtronic advice (never put pump on belt or in full-body scanner), and spoken to pumper friends.
Am I right in assuming that 1) I should alert the screener that I have a pump and 2) either keep it on and ask for a pat-down or 3) remove it and ask that it be hand inspected? I don't like the idea of anyone fiddling with it. I will politely refuse any demand that it be full-body scanned or run through the x-ray belt. And I will ask for a TSA medical director (? never heard of that term) or supervisor if there are problems. Should I arrive 30 minutes earlier than usual? I could be overreacting, but I did see that TV report of the teen whose pump was ruined because they scanned it against her wishes. None of this makes me a happy traveler. Thanks!
i just returned from a trip out west and left out of Vegas. I have never had issues with TSA and my pump until now. I immediately notified them that i had a pump and requested a hand inspection because they had the full body scanner. And i had decided long ago not to take the chance. The screeners tried their best to convince me that it was safe and i should just walk thru. Finally the "supervisor" came over and said to me, " I don't know what the big deal is, i'm a diabetic, i would just go thru it".He had no pump. After about 20min, lots of unprofessional behavior,and fearing my husband would be tackled for his escalating attitude over the situation, I finally got the hand inspection by yet another person that they had to call over. It was ridiculous. The "funny" thing is that we checked a pistol in our luggage with no issues whatso ever, it was unloaded, in the proper case, and locked, and they just glanced at it and said ok, just sign this.
I always ask for a pat-down instead, just to be safe. So far my experiences with these have been fine and respectful.