What is Freefall?

Posted: 20th June 2017

We've come to realise that try as we might to not use industry specific language we sometimes fail and it seems that when we talk about 'Freefall' people are often unclear as to what that actually means. So what is freefall? Freefall is the state that a tandem skydive pair are in when they first exit the aircraft. So once the aeroplane has reached the desired jump altitude (height from the ground) that we are wanting to skydive from the tandem pair exit the aircraft - they are then in a state of freefall until the parachute is deployed by the tandem instructor. The pair are literally falling freely through the air at speeds of approximately 125mph. The freefall is the skydiving part of the experience and the length of time that the experience lasts depends on the altitude that you are jumping from. The parachute is deployed at 5000ft so the 'freefall' or skydive lasts for the time it takes to fall from the jump height minus the parachute deployment height. So jumping from 15,000ft minus 5000ft when the parchute is deployed gives you a freefall distance of 10,000ft which on average takes about 60 seconds to cover. Jumping from 10,000ft would give you a distance of 10,000ft to cover taking about 30 seconds. To calculate the speed that you would freefall at you can use our freefall calculator (refresh after each calculation)

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