Skydiving Insurance

The time to think about skydiving insurance is right now, while you're sitting comfortably in front of your computer. If you put it off and leave the thinking about this important subject until you're getting into the aircraft, about to make your first skydive you're bound to reduce your enjoyment, to say the least.

Let's get the boring stats out of the way and come right out and say that statistically there is approx. 1-170 to 1-200 chance that men reading this article could be injured when they make their first skydive. The chances get a little tougher for women reading this and they drop to 1-90 for those who make a static line skydive (as opposed to a tandem, where the sexes rate fairly similar). We have a page on this subject and I'll link this article to that age as soon as we've reviewed and updated it.

We skydiving instructors have quite a few ways of actively managing the risks which are inherent in skydiving; by being careful how we select people who do a skydive (yes, we do this) by training them carefully and making sure the weather conditions are as good as possible and... of a good few other things but you get the picture. Risk management is generally a process of continuous improvement and we are constantly nibbling away at priorities to improve safety stats,  however let's be clear about a full scale reality check. Skydiving is a risk sport and you should seriously consider what kind of skydiving insurance you want before you jump. It's your body and it's your responsibility.

Types of skydiving insurance available

There are three main kinds of skydiving insurance policies available to everyone who skydives, these can be termed 1) the mandatory third party policy,  2) the personal accident skydiving inurance policy and 3) the travel insurance policy with skydiving / parachuting cover. Let's discuss each of these and be clear about them;

Mandatory third party skydiving insurance policy

This is exactly what it says on the tin - mandatory! If you are jumping at any kind of reputable skydiving centre the operators/managers of that drop zone will ensure that you have to have some form of third party cover. This kind of policy is primarily in case you happen to mess up, pull down on the wrong steering toggle and land on someones car (or dog?). This insurance is there to cover the cost of repairs to the car (or dog). In the past it has also paid out for a person beng landed on. In the UK this manadatory skydiving insurance is provided by the British Parachute Association (BPA) who sources the insurance centrally and negotiates best possible rates from a (usually) single underwriter. This is issued individually to every first time parachutist/ skydiver and you will sign this during the very first training session you have. This is not really an accident policy and it won't cover any necessary medical expenses which may be incurred by a skydiving injury. It certainly won't cover loss of earnings. Now when I say not really, let's try to be exact and say that there is a small amount (£15,000 at time of writing) of cover for death or critical injury. This definitely does not cover you in when you are indoor skydiving in a wind tunnel because indoor skydiving is not regulated by skydiving associations (quite rightly, in our view).

Personal accident skydiving insurance policy

There is an update to this article in our blog, please check it out.

These types of policies are designed to pay you some money if you injure yourself (or worse) while you are skydiving. They tend to require you to specify the date on which you plan to make your jump although if the weather or other circumstances  prevents this from happening you can usually amend the date with your broker.

There are relatively few of these about and we had to dig deep to find them. We've listed here the ones which we have been able to find and which have the right kind of cover. As in every insurance policy, the terms tend to change as the insurers do their best to manage their own risks (of paying out, mostly). Therefore you should make sure that you read the policy yourself and check that it's suitable for your needs. We also want to remind you that we are not financial advisors and we are not licenced to make recommendations (so we won't do that). What we can do however, is to do the leg work and list them here with our first level of comments.

Here's a very easy one to use from SportsGuard. A form which took me 15 seconds to fill in, just tick five boxes and fill in one date, this skydiving insurance policy with personal accident cover starts cover from about £9.80 (at time of writing) for a single tandem skydive on a bronze plan, right up to up to annual policies with extra benefits, this policy seems pretty hard to beat (click here). Having said that we'd be pleased to hear from anyone who has a better deal and would like to share it with us all. BTW folks, clicking here will also help to fund the running costs of our site.

Travel Insurance policies which include skydiving insurance cover

It's really important to read the small print on your travel insurance policy. OK, it's an excellent cure for insomnia but having read quite a lot of these things, I can estimate that probably less than 1% of travel insurance companies ever seem to cover skydiving insurance. Some of those who do, seem to quietly drop skydiving from their cover after a while (hmmmm). So it's important to not assume that this years terms and conditions will be the same as last years - they almost certainly won't be! Having said that we'll be keeping our eyes open and doing our best to keep them honest.

Current best buys on travel insurance which includes skydiving insurance

We've done most of the leg work for you. At the time of writing, these were our top five policies and one of them is pretty much guaranteed to be the right one for you.  We suggest that you get quotes from each one and then compare them side by side. This is because your own personal profile  will get you a better deal with one or other insurers.  Another good thing is that if you click from here, the insurers will know, when they count up their clicks that you've come from acceleratedfreefall.com here and it will help them to justify giving special attention to providing skydiving insurance and that should help them to understand that there is greater demand, which will help them to give more focus on the skydiving insurance market. Hopefully this should mean better deals all round for us all -that's a good thing - right? We hope to save you time, money and hassle and without you having to pay a subscription. If you find a deal here that you like, please just register, write a blog and pass it forward to others. If you do register we won't ever pass on your details to third parties.

It's comforting when you see that a big name insurer like MoreTh>n provides good cover for niche sports including skydiving insurance / parachuting insurance (at time of writing). They don't make a big thing of it though, and the section to get to is not the easiest to find however, so you need to click on this screen and then make sure you opt for premium policy (the economy policy doesn't cover skydiving insurance) and be sure to click the option for special sports and activities. You should be aware that there will be an increased excess to £250 on the medical repatriation cover. However this is really not so bad at all, because the annual policy starts at £29.99 for premium and I've been offered single trip travel insurance policies for this figure that don't have a fraction of the cover that MoreTh>n offer. Another big plus is that there is no limit on number of jumps, so if you decide to learn to skydive on an accelerated free fall course, maybe after doing your tandem skydive, then you're covered. As always, check the policy document (currently section 28 covers skydiving) because they have been known to change.

With ten million medical cover, 24 hour assistance, pre-existing conditions covered and a nice simple on-line quote and booking system this adventure travel insurance policy from Essential Travel hit all the right hot buttons for a casual vacation skydive. We also liked the options to cover groups, gap year students, over 55s, winter sports and a whole stack of other adventure sports. There are a few other nice things about Essential Travel but you'll see these as soon as you get on their site (this will open up another page so please come back to us after you've checked it out).

We liked this quote for travel insurance with skydiving insurance cover from VentureGuard because it covers our readers to go on vacation and skydive until the age of seventy with skydiving insurance on an annual policy or with individual trips. This is also an easy to use form with just five boxes to tick and I was in and out within a minute.

These guys in UkGetcover crept up on us and we're really glad they did because they've got a cracking little travel accident insurance policy which includes skydiving insurance. It excludes skydiving in the USA however. Even so it's worth adding to your list of quotes.

If like us you use winter sports insurance for skiing, you may have tripped across Columbus but  in the past when we looked we didn't know Columbus also provide adventure travel insurance which includes 'parachuting'. Sure, they use the older term, but a quick look at the terms and conditions tells me they seem very much up to date. From our research there seems to be no limit to number of jumps covered (correct at time of writing) and although somewhere on their site they mention the term 'no upper age limit' we reckon that refers to 'normal travel insurance. In itself that's pretty handy but for parachuting insurance the limit seems to be 74, which we're sure you'll agree isn't half bad. Again, you need to find your way through to the right part of the site, which this click will take you to. Please remember to look under the small field called 'other options' where it says "Select the sports and activities that you want to cover". Scroll down until you get to 'parachuting' then highlight that before you click 'show price'. As an aside we were also very impressed to see some single trip travel insurance starting at £2.99 per trip although that seems to be for just standard travel insurance (please let us know if this is not the case).

We'll keep looking around for the best deals on the market for skydiving insurance. We hope you'll help too and feed back the deals that you find and share them with the other readers of acceleratedfreefall.com. Pass it forward folks and share the joy!

Non - skydiving Insurance travel policies

After an extensive review of many policies we also liked the policies below for different reasons, although they don't tick the box of having skydiving insurance cover. We felt that our readers might find these useful for those non-skydiving breaks (even I've been known to have these - sometimes) and also to pass on deals to your non-skydiving friends. BTW, if you want to do this, why not just send them the link for this page and let them read it for themselves. Who knows? they may well see the light one day.....

For plain excellent value in travel insurance its hard to beat TopDog Insurance and it's got to be worth a quote.

We just had to pass on this lead for cheap and good travel insurance with an easy to use website from Insurefor. Let us know how it stacks up for you.

Hands up who hasn't heard of EasyJet? Nah - I don't believe you. OK, but when you think about great deals on travel insurance do you immediately think of Sir Stelios? Well, its definitely worth a quote and when you find a great deal please remember where you heard it first. PLEASE blog it here, good or bad, so all our readers get to know. Hey, I wonder if he would like to have a skydiving division? Hmmm, how does  easyJump sound? We'll be waiting for the call.

There is an update to this article in our blog, please check it out.

Don't be a stranger after you've had your great deal for skydiving insurance

These deals do change from time to time, so we suggest that you bookmark this site and click the RSS button. That way you'll receive notifications of article updates when we do them. We also want to hear your views, so we'd like to warmly invite you to tell us how your experience goes perhaps by posting a blog review on www.acceleratedfreefall.com and we'll use that to update these reviews. All you need to do is register and you can login anytime to tell the world your news on skydiving insurance, cheap skydiving or even ask questions of the dive doctor.

Perhaps you'd like to read more about Indoor skydiving? click here

or find out more about Tandem skydiving? click here

Perhaps learning to skydive on an accelerated free fall course sounds good to you and you'd like to know more?, we have a full section to read on this subject so please just click here