While we are looking at tandem skydiving and accelerated free fall let's take a good look at the risks inherent in sport parachuting and ask ourselves “is it ever’safe’ to make a skydive?”. We'll try to be very clear about how we view the real possibilities of something going wrong leading to injury or even death. Put it another way " what are the odds of something going wrong while skydiving?".
Before we go on, I'll challenge you to ask yourself "Is it possible that the only reason I asked this question was perhaps, to find an excuse for my fears or anxiety?"
Don't get me wrong here,there's absolutely nothing to be ashamed about in having fears, the only thing 'wrong' is to seek to justify our fears by loading them onto someone or something else. What does this mean? Its a direct reference to those who kniw they are afraid and then spend a lot of time vociferously arguing why its a crackpot thing to do, crazy, stupid, mad or any other derrogatory reference they can come up with. The reality is they are just plain scared! Well, as we said earlier, there's nothing wrong with being scared... its how we use that fear that matters.
Well, is it ‘safe’ to make a live free fall parachute jump? No, of course not. Nothing is ever really safe is it? Everything has some level of hazard and the decision to be made is ‘how much danger are you personally prepared to accept’? Aviation sports are all considered ‘hazardous’ in one way or another. If you are short of time and simply want the safest option of all, with all of the fun then check out our article, and keep things simple.
If you'd still like to research further and look at the overall picture, considering the different methods of free fall parachuting, the statistics show that tandem is safer for first timers. This makes sense, because the instructor is in direct control of the whole process from the time you get into the aircraft until the time you get back to the clubhouse. Our article looks at the full picture and it may surprise you.
