Successful Skydiving Spectating: A Quick Guide for “Ground Crew”

Want to bring your tribe along to marvel at your majesty as you make that longed-for skydive? Awesome! Skydiving is even more fun when you have friends and family along to celebrate with you. We have a few tips you can share with them to ensure smooth sailing (so pass these along to your people).

1. NAIL THE TIMING

At Piedmont Skydiving, we pride ourselves on the way we balance excellent customer service with the efficiency of our process, so skydivers can expect to be in and our in under two hours (including the necessary preflight “ground school” briefing). That interval can vary, depending on weather conditions. If your adoring public doesn’t want to stick to your side for two hours, here’s the tip: have them show up 30-45 minutes after the appointment time. That way, they’ll take a pass on the waiver/payment/instruction/gear-up process, but they’ll be waiting for you at the landing area when you whizz back down from the sky.

2. LEAVE FIDO AT HOME

We love dogs, too! However: dogs and dropzones, unfortunately, don’t mix. No matter how well-behaved the dog, an active airfield with a skydiving operation isn’t a safe place at all for pups, so for the good of everyone involved (furry and bipedal alike), we must be very strict about this rule. No worries, though: he’ll enjoy the video later.

3. BRING A PICNIC

Why not make a day of it? We have plenty of space to set up a picnic, and there’s no more pleasant activity than to lounge on a fuzzy blanket and watch the skydivers drift down from above. If you bring a set of binoculars, you can see them from the moment they exit the plane–which is a pretty cool visual, if we do say so ourselves.

Perhaps you’ll even convince your ground-hog buddies to join you for the next one!