Founded in 1961, the British Parachute Association is the national governing body for sports parachuting in the United Kingdom and we are committed to maintaining the highest standards of safety in the sport. We have locations all over the country where you can take part in your first jump.
New skydivers can try the different disciplines and find out what they enjoy most. These disciplines include:
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Formation Skydiving: the group contains 4 or 8 jumpers who make the formations, plus a videographer that records the performance in the air. During the freefall (35 seconds for the group of 4; 50 seconds for the group of 8), the team performs as many formations as possible.
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Canopy Formation: this event involves 2, 4 or 8 members that link their parachutes together to create predetermined formations as many times as they can. The main types of Canopy Formation are rotations, speed and sequential.
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Artistic Events: this includes freestyle and free-flying. The team members show a choreographed jump, like stand-ups, sit flying and other aerial gymnastics, not easy to do with wind speeds of 120 mph!
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Canopy Piloting: this is a relatively new discipline that combines different performance characteristics such as accuracy, distance and speed.
At the British Parachute Association, we also try to encourage more and more members to take part in competitive skydiving because it’s a challenging way of helping them develop their skills.
