Skydiving's Great Leap Forward

The original 'extreme' sport is reaching out to kids to help restore its falling popularity. Hannah Karp on vertical wind tunnels, anxious parents and the 'whoa!' factor.

By HANNAH KARP
November 23, 2007; Page W1

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's ... a 5-year-old child learning to skydive.

"I'm a little bit scared," says Danny Serrano, as his sister helps him zip up his baby-blue flying suit for an indoor practice session at a skydiving center in Perris, Calif. Outside the windows, real parachutists are plummeting to the earth.

A rookie jumper in the tunnel at Perris Valley Skydiving

Though Danny can't legally jump from a plane for 11 more years, the skydiving industry is counting on kindergartners like him to help rejuvenate the sport.

Adrenaline sports from vertical skateboarding to BMX racing may be all the rage, but the original one -- skydiving -- has fallen on hard times. As air traffic increases and small airports become encroached by suburban sprawl, skydiving centers, or "drop zones," are being crowded out. While the sport is still relatively cheap, soaring fuel prices have raised the cost of a jump by as much as 50% in five years. Total jumps are off 4% since 2001 and tandem jumps (where a novice skydives with an instructor) are off 10%, according to the United States Parachute Association.

To slow its descent, the business is making an Olympic push, hosting charity stunts, building "practice" centers that use giant in-ground fans to hold people aloft and, in a move that could send chills down the spines of parents everywhere, making a special push to recruit kids as young as 3. "We have to have numbers for a matter of survival," says Chris Needels, the USPA president.

Popular With Older Folks

Justin Tinucci flying in Hollywood

For years, skydiving was seen as the ultimate thrill ride for rebels and adrenaline junkies. The first commercial skydiving centers sprung up in the 1950s thanks to a surplus of parachutes after WWII. Participation grew steadily over the next several decades as parachute technology, training and safety regulations improved.

It's still popular with older folks -- about half of the USPA's members are over 40. Former president George Bush, 83, just performed his sixth jump to celebrate the reopening of his presidential museum at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

The average price of a jump for a seasoned skydiver is about $24, and novices can make a tandem jump with an instructor for roughly $220. But the continued growth of newer extreme sports has opened more options. ESPN hasn't included skydiving in its annual X Games since 1998. "It just wasn't progressing," says ESPN spokeswoman Katie Moses Swope.

That's left serious skydivers desperate to rebrand the sport as something more mainstream. Bryan Burke, special projects manager at Skydive Arizona, is launching a training course next year to create a "skydive patrol," analogous to the National Ski Patrol, to make jumpers feel safer.

In July, the USPA instructed skydiving centers to prohibit "swooping" at normal landing areas. Swooping is a dangerous form of skydiving where parachutists jump from a plane at about half the usual altitude (5,000 feet as opposed to 10,000 feet) and try to maneuver at high speeds between poles or gates just a few feet from the ground. A parachutist was killed in a swooping accident in Florida in May.

MORE

• Watch a video of wind tunnel sky diving.

One new skydiving center in Lebanon, Ohio, is trying to boost the sport's image by donating more than 100 tandem jumps to charities each year -- and won permission from the USPA and a parachute manufacturer to take terminally ill children as young as 6 on tandem skydives.

"People think it's just an asinine activity that you risk your life for," says skydiving coach Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld, who works at the Perris Valley Skydiving center 70 miles east of Los Angeles. Mr. Brodsky-Chenfeld, who once suffered a broken neck in a plane crash, says skydiving should be seen as a serious sport that requires focus and dedication.

The sport's most ambitious initiative is opening "vertical wind tunnels," giant tubes with fans on the floor that blow fast enough to keep people afloat, in shopping centers and at drop zones across the country. While many of the customers are adults, children who are too young to jump out of planes can practice the sport safely for about $50 a session.

There are 11 wind tunnels open across the country and at least five more being built in cities including Philadelphia, Toronto, East Rutherford, N.J., Kansas City, Kan., and Austin, Texas. Skydive Arizona opened an indoor center for all ages in September 2005 with a swimming pool and grassy campsites for overnight guests. SkyVenture Colorado opened last year in Lone Tree, Colo., with temperature-controlled air. Last Tuesday, Universal Studios in Los Angeles opened iFly, a rare outdoor tunnel. The center says it averages about 40 groups a day.

Jennifer Tinucci, who owns a call-center company, brought her kids to SkyVenture Colorado last year after hearing about the center's weekly "kid's league," which costs $449 for 12 sessions. She signed up Kayla, 11, and Justin, 8, for a trial.

Kayla Tinucci

Now, four days a week, when Ms. Tinucci's kids come home from their after-school soccer practice, they strip off their shorts and cleats, throw on their helmets and flying suits, and jump back in the minivan. "I don't usually have much time to cook dinner," says Ms. Tinucci.

The tunnel, which looks like a spaceship, has four fans of up to 1,200 horsepower that can produce a 180 mph wind current. They create enough wind resistance (and noise) to simulate free fall. Some beginners sprawl on the floor and give the technician a thumbs-up to start the fans.

The Flying Tinuccis

More advanced flyers like the Tinuccis just hurl themselves though the door with the fans already blowing. Starting position is arms out, belly-down about 8 feet in the air, but maneuvers include spinning, flying head-down or shooting up as high as 45 feet to the metal grate at the top of the tunnel. The first time he and his sister tried it, "We were like, whoa!," says Justin Tinucci, a fourth grader. "We got addicted and went again and again."

Last week the flying Tinuccis helped open the new iFly tunnel at Universal Studios, and in March, Justin will go to Bedford, England, to compete in a tunnel with some of the world's top professional skydivers. He'll be sponsored by energy-drink maker Go Fast and helmet company Sky Systems. "Before we started skydiving, we had no chance of being famous," he says.

Ms. Tinucci says she's not scared by the idea of her children someday leaping from airplanes. "They fly as well or better then many instructors," she says. "Their skill is equal to the skill of someone with 7,000 to 10,000 jumps from a plane."

INTO THE AIR, JUNIOR BIRDMEN

Skydiving enthusiasts are opening "practice" centers where kids (and adults) can hover on air currents in vertical tunnels. Here are five places to try it:

Justin Tinucci in full gear

NAME	INTRODUCTORY PRICE/SESSION	COMMENTS
Perris Valley Skydiving Perris, Calif.	$45 for kids, adults $50	This 96-foot-tall wind tunnel has a two-hour Kids Flight Club on Sundays with pizza and soda. In December, instructors dress as Santa Claus.
iFly SFBAY Union City, Calif.	$50 for kids, adults	Opened in September with a conference room for corporate team-building sessions.
Paraclete XP Skyventure Raeford, N.C.	$54 for two minutes	Scheduled to open Dec. 1. The tunnel's giant air chamber, one of the world's largest, can hold as many as 18 flyers at a time.
iFly Utah Ogden, Utah	$44 for kids, adults $49	12-foot-wide tunnel opened in June in a sports complex with indoor rock-climbing, bowling and surfing.
Skyventure New Hampshire Nashua, N.H.	$43 for kids, adults $48	Center offers teen camps and welcomes kids as young as three (if potty trained). For creaky adults: an on-site masseuse.

Last year, Craig O'Brien, a 44-year-old photographer who lives in Nuevo, Calif., took his then 3-year-old daughter indoor skydiving with a group of his friends at the Perris Valley center. This summer, the 5-year-old started clamoring to get back in the air. Mr. O'Brien resisted at first but now takes her to the tunnel about every other weekend.

"I'm praying every day that she doesn't become a skydiver," says Mr. O'Brien. "The thought of my daughter being old enough to drive a vehicle around is scary enough."

As airports expand, skydiving centers are feeling the squeeze. Kapowsin Air Sports, a skydiving company that operated from a private airport near Tacoma, Wash., was recently forced to relocate after being sued by residents concerned about noise and safety. Another skydiving company in Creswell, Ore., had to move its landing area this spring. And even in the skydiving mecca of Deland, Fla. -- which is home to an average of 85,000 jumps a year -- skydivers are concerned. A new air-traffic control center that's set to be built to handle increased airport traffic will have more-stringent takeoff and landing rules that could hamper jumps. (A city proposal to guarantee skydivers a certain number of jumps per year was rejected by federal officials.)

$10,000 a Season

While it doesn't keep income figures for members, the USPA says rising costs have already changed the sport's demographics -- more serious skydivers these days have high-paying jobs. Steve Miller, 42, a finance lawyer in Huntington Beach, Calif., says his skydiving buddies include the chief financial officer of a private equity firm, two rocket scientists and an expert of microwave technology. He says he spends about $10,000 on skydiving a season.

The USPA says the sport is getting safer. Its figures show there were 21 fatalities out of 2.12 million jumps last year in the U.S., down from 27 out of 2.18 million jumps in 2005.

On a recent Friday, Pete Thomas, a podiatrist in Santa Ana, Calif., spent $400 on an indoor skydiving lesson for a friend's 5-year-old daughter, Hailey Phipps, and several of her friends. He was sure Hailey would enjoy the experience, since she's "such a trooper" at the water park.

"If this leads to a skydiving addiction later in her life, fine. I understand it can be dangerous, but you've got to take risks for things you're passionate about," Dr. Thomas says.

Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@dowjones.com