Our Skydiving Safety Record

Published: August 5, 2017

Skydive OC's Skydiving Safety Record

It's perfectly normal to be nervous heading into your first skydive, but our experienced staff at Skydive OC should help ease your mind. We prioritize your safety.

With more than 35,000 jumps between them, our professional tandem instructors are highly experienced and have all passed rigorous examination. They will be at your side answering any and all questions you may have about skydiving.

We want to make sure you're feeling as comfortable as possible heading into this experience because a relaxed state of mind can truly enhance a skydive. We welcome you to browse through our skydiving FAQs prior to your skydive and come armed with questions.

But here are a few important points that we've set aside.

How's our skydiving safety record?

We are a United States Parachute Association (USPA) "group member," which means that we are among the U.S. professional skydiving centers who are regulated and approved by the sports' governing agency. This shouldn't be taken lightly, as these dropzones have pledged to abide by a certain set of safety standards set out by the USPA.

We're proud to say that with more than 12,000 tandem skydivers at Ocean City Skydiving Center, we have not had a single student injury. Injuries typically occur during poorly-executed landings, and the care we take in landing our tandems greatly minimizes this risk.

How safe is tandem skydiving?

Tandem skydiving has the best safety track record of any type of skydiving. According to the National Safety Council, a person is much more likely to be killed getting struck by lightning or stung by a bee. In 2016, the United States Parachute Association recorded 21 fatal skydiving accidents in the U.S. out of roughly 3.2 million jumps. For tandem skydiving, that equates to one student fatality per 500,000 tandem jumps over the past decade.

The sport of skydiving as a whole continues to improve its safety record. In the 1970s, the sport averaged 42.5 skydiving fatalities per year. Since then, the average has dropped each decade. In the 1980s, the average was 34.1; in the 1990s, the average was 32.3, and in the first decade of the new millennium (2000-2009), the average dropped again to 25.8. Over the past seven years, the annual average continues its decline to 22.1.

Who packs the parachute?

Every tandem that goes into the air has two parachutes, a main one, and a reserve that's there in the unlikely chance the first one malfunctions. At Skydive OC, our main parachutes are packed by either one of our experienced instructors, an FAA-certified parachute rigger, or a directly supervised parachute technician. The reserve parachutes are inspected and repacked every 180 days, as per FAA regulations, by a certified rigger.

Our top-of-the-notch equipment is also equipped with an automatic activation device, which will automatically deploy the reserve parachute at a certain altitude should something go wrong during the pull sequence.

All of this ensures the utmost safety of the tandem instructor and their student rider. So what are you waiting for? Book your first jump with us today!

Please note: Safety is our number one priority, however we make no qualms about it. At the end of the day, skydiving is a dangerous sport. This article does provide a lot of information in regards to safety. However, if you have any questions, we will be more than happy to talk to you.