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Despite the lack of concrete parachuting statistics, misconceptions still surround both parachuting and skydiving. Many people believe that every year, there are a lot of individuals who die or get injured because of parachuting and they attribute a great number of reasons to these wrong assumptions.

There are only several reasons why parachuting accidents occur including malfunctioning equipment such as a canopy or a reserve canopy that did not open, collisions between jumpers, and difficulties during landing. Malfunctioning equipment is said to have claimed more lives than the other two major causes of accidents. However, operator error is the real culprit for most of the time.

For one, jumpers do not use just one canopy, instead they have a main canopy and second canopy which makes it almost impossible for jumpers to get injured because of malfunctioning equipment . Also, it is usually the problem of lines tangling rather than broken parachutes. On the other hand, difficulty in landing is usually contributed by factors that are often not subject to the control of the jumper.

Usually, accidents due to landing are attributed to poor estimation of how much longer jumpers have to take to perform maneuvers in the air. The third reason is largely due to jumpers deploying their parachutes so closely together.

It is easy for people to believe that novices are involved in more parachuting accidents than experts. But in reality, there are lesser chances that students will get injured or die during jumps. In fact, there are more expert jumpers who die each year in parachuting than students due to the fact that they tend to try higher altitudes which increase the risk of accidents.

According to studies, parachuting is considerably safer when compared with perceived lesser risky sports such as scuba diving or board surfing. In fact the average death due to parachuting is only 30 in every 100,000 jumps while there is a higher rate of 47 deaths in every 1000,000 scuba diving exercises every year. There is a higher rate of death in mountain climbing totaling to 50 deaths in every 100,000 and 67 lives are claimed every year because of hot air ballooning.

Interestingly history proved that parachuting accidents could be deterred even when it seems most impossible. There are so many accounts in the past, particularly in World War I and II, which proved that people jumped and met accidents while airborne and still managed to get through it with minor injuries.

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After World War I and II parachutes were used for different purposes. Pushing the limits of extreme sports, new variants of parachuting was created. The origin of skydiving in uncertain but its popularity later on led to different sports and events around the world.

Others engage in this activity for thrills, while serious skydivers join competitions around the world. parachuting sports are also included in the Olympics which made it not just another recreational activity for adrenaline junkies. Parachute skydiving comes in different variants.

Most of these variants are still related to skydiving with certain modifications. parachutes come in different designs which make them accessible for different uses. There are many Parachuting organizations that hold events for their members.

Parachute skydiving

There are many sports that are related to parachuting. Most people are aware of skydiving as a recreational activity an extreme sport. However there are also other variants that parachute enthusiast engage in. Most of theses sports involve a lot of skill and requires proper training. They test the ability of the pilot to control their parachutes at different levels.

One of the variants is the Accuracy landing. The main objective is to land as close as possible to a target. Teams are composed of 5 members that compete in 8 rounds. The members of the team jump together from 2,700 feet to 3,300 feet. Each member should land as close as possible or exactly dead center of the target. The score is measured from the dead center in meters. Scores are added each round. They considered as individual and team scores.

Blade running involves participants flying down a mountain and making their way through slalom courses using their parachutes. Pilots use a different kind of parachute that gives them more speed. These parachutes have smaller surface areas. This requires a lot of ability in canopy control. It’s a winter sport which is a cross between slalom skiing and skydiving. Its inventor is hoping that it will get featured in the winter X games.

Canopy formation is another variant wherein participants built formations. This is done by flying their own parachutes close to each other and docking on their teammate’s parachutes. This may sound easy but it takes a lot of coordination and timing to be able to complete a formation.

If one of the team makes a mistake, the formation will break. Free falling is does not offer much time too and members should be