What altitude do skydivers jump from? As far up as possible! The height of a skydiving jump determines the amount of freefall time you’ll enjoy, and our standard tandem skydiving altitude of 14,000 vastly outstrips most dropzone’s 10,000. We’re here to answer a few of the most burning questions you have about skydiving altitude from every direction we can think of.

Ya ready? Excellent. Let’s talk about the highest highs to which your heart will soar!

How high is the average skydive?

Like we mentioned: the average skydive is performed from about 10,000 AGL (above ground level). Mostly, this owes to the fact that your standard skydiving dropzone operates an aircraft that’s too small and underpowered to get any higher without costing entirely too much in time and fuel.

How high can you parachute from?

Technically, depending on the resources you’re willing to devote to the endeavor, you can skydive from as high as the last, fading grasp of Earth’s gravity. A handful of skydiving heroes over our sport’s history–Felix Baumgartner among them, for Red Bull’s much-ballyhooed Stratos project–has jumped from, y’know, space. Military operatives regularly jump from somewhere around the cruising altitude of a commercial jetliner. There’s even a tandem operation that offers tandem skydiving over Mount Everest.

Most folks, of course, don’t want to drop several million (or thousand, in the case of the commercial Everest tandem operation) bucks. Neither are they particularly keen to sign up for the Special Forces and end that uber-high skydive in a war zone. That said: Skydivers all over the world regularly drive long distances to visit a dropzone like Skydive Orange to gobble up the most altitude that’s available “without a prescription,” as it were.

How high are you when you skydive?

The United States Parachute Association (of which we are a very proud member) sets down the minimum deployment altitude for a sport skydiver at 2,500 feet. That number is a nice, round 4,000 feet for tandem instructor/student pairs, for the obvious reason that more safety margin is better for all involved. At 18,000 feet, everybody on the plane must have supplemental oxygen (because skydiving aircraft aren’t pressurized, y’know). Therefore: If you’re in skydiving freefall for fun, you’re almost certainly gonna be somewhere between 18,000 and 2,500 feet, whether you’re a brand-new tandem skydiving student tasting sky for the first time or a super-cool professional with thousands of jumps under your belt.

What height do you skydive from?

That’s up to you! Opportunities to skydive from 10,000-or-so feet abound all over the world…but don’t you owe it to yourself to take it a little higher? At Skydive Orange, our skydiving aircraft is our pride and joy for a reason; you’ll “fall” for it as completely as we did, and you’ll fall from 14,000’…or 15,000’, on Fridays! Give us a call today and let us show you how higher skydives result in higher highs for your height-hungry heart. You’ll certainly be glad you did.