Blog

Skydive License

• July 2012
• Fly Training

Steph,

Hello 🙂 I credit you with helping to push my love for climbing forward and getting me into skydiving. I hope to someday come out to Moab & take you & Mario up on the tandem B.A.S.E jump.

I have a few questions about getting my skydive license. Do you have any tips or suggestions to help it go smoothly? Did you encounter any “speed bumps,” along the way? How quickly did you earn your license? How often do you jump now? Have you ever instructed?

Thanks for being you and being an inspiration to those “high on life,” all over the world.

Take care,
Amy

Hi Amy,
There is a general process for getting your A license to skydive. Most drop zones want you to come in and make a tandem jump first. Some drop zones actually want you to do 2, but it’s better if you can start with one (more affordable). From there, you will sign up for AFF. It’s possible to do your 7 AFF jumps in two days, which is what I did, but you can also spread it out over some weekends, which is more common. I think if you can do it in a single phase of time, that is the best: if you spread it out too long, you will always feel un-current and nervous when you come in to jump. The very best thing would be to do it over the span of several days or a week, I think. After you have finished AFF, you are on student status until you get your A license. This means that you can jump on your own but you need to have supervision for a few jumps from a coach (there are coaches at every drop zone). The best thing is to stay at the same drop zone until you get your A license, which is a total of 25 jumps including the 7 AFF jumps.

Once you have your A license, you can go and jump on your own at any drop zone. The licenses go up to D, and then there are different ratings that people get if they want (like a pro rating or a coach rating).

You can do the training as fast or as slow as you like. The main roadblock with starting to skydive is cost, because the AFF training is expensive, and transitioning from rental gear (which costs per jump) to buying your own gear (which is expensive) is also happening during this time period. So there’s a lot of upfront cost. Once you finally have your training and your gear, jumps are usually about $25 each.

Good luck!
Steph