Skydiving over fascinating Greek landscapes – Individual or Tandem Jumps
Spice up your holiday in Greece with an adrenaline shock you will never forget! Skydiving is a lifetime experience ❤
Where to Skydive in Greece?
Skydiving Centers in Greece
What is Skydiving?
Skydiving – a Competitive Sport
Tandem Jump
How Skydiving Started
Jump from Airplane or Helicopter
Sport Parachutes
Where to skydive in Greece?
Skydiving has become extremely popular over the last years among Greeks as well as tourists. Skydiving centers in Greece are in the mainland close to the two largest cities of Athens and Thessaloniki and in Crete not far from Heraklion. There are no skydiving centers in any other Greek island yet.
At the Greek skydiving centers, you can try both tandem jumps – a one-time skydiving experience attached to the instructor – and you can fulfill skydive training courses if you wish to become a skydiving instructor. As a souvenir and real proof of your courage, the skydiving centers film you during your dive and give you the film and photographs on a USB afterwards.
Skydiving Centers in Greece
Skydive Athens
SkyDive Athens is operating all year round. The center is flying an 18-seated turbine aircraft raising to a height of 14000ft (4200m) in only 10 minutes. SkyDive Athens has its base in the region of Kastro in Central Greece, and it is easy to reach by car or public bus within about an hour and a half. Treat yourself with a tandem-jump and get an adrenalin kick while skydiving under the Greek sun. At an altitude of 14000ft (4200m) the skydiver exits the plane while safely attached to the experienced skydiving instructor with a special harness.
Skydive Greece
Skydive Greece too is operating all year round and proposes Tandem skydiving from Megara, just 30 min. from Athens city center or 5 min. from the suburban train station in Megara. Fridays from 2pm till 7pm and weekends and national holidays from 9am till 5pm.
The drop zone is located at the Megara General Aviation Airport (LGMG). It is a historic and sufficient landing area with a spectacular view towards the open sea. The rare natural beauty of the landscape, the view of the open sea and the great weather conditions, makes this drop zone exceptional and chosen by skydivers from all over the world.
Hellenic Skydivers
Another club in Greece, organizing skydiving courses and activities, is the Hellenic Skydivers and its activities are held in the Municipal Airport of Polykastro, Thessaloniki. The club operates every weekend all year round.
Skydive Attica
Skydive Attica is operating from the General Aviation Airport, of Pahi/Megara. Skydive Attica is flying and diving from an altitude of 1200ft, operating Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 09:00 – 20:00. The facilities can be reached by car (25 min. drive from Athens) or by the suburban railway (Megara Station). The aircraft used for parachuting is a Cessna 182.
Skydive Crete
Skydive Crete offers tandem jumps with instructors at the Kasteli Airport of Heraklion in Crete. You will jump from a plane at an altitude of 14.000 ft. During the tandem jump you will be harnessed to your qualified instructor.
What is skydiving?
Skydiving – maybe better known as parachuting – is the action of exiting an aircraft and returning to earth with the aid of a parachute. It may or may not involve a certain amount of free-fall, a time during which the parachute has not been deployed and the body gradually accelerates to terminal velocity.
Skydiving – a competitive sport
Parachuting is performed as a recreational activity and a competitive sport, as well as for the deployment of military personnel Airborne forces and occasionally forest firefighters.
A drop zone operator at a sky diving airport operates one or more aircraft that takes groups of skydivers up for a fee. An individual jumper can go up in a light aircraft such as a Cessna C-172 or C-182. In busier drop zones (DZ) larger aircraft may be used such as the Cessna Caravan C208, De Havilland Twin Otter DHC6 or Short Skyvan.
Skydiving with instructor (tandem jump)
Many people make their first jump with an experienced and trained instructor – this type of skydive may be in the form of a tandem skydive. During the tandem jump, the instructor is responsible for emergency procedures in the unlikely event that they will be needed, therefore freeing the student to concentrate on learning to skydive. Other training methods include static line, IAD (Instructor Assisted Deployment), and AFF (Accelerated Free fall) also known as Progressive Free-Fall (PFF) in Canada.
How Skydiving started
The history of skydiving starts with Andre-Jacques Garnerin who made successful parachute jumps from a hot-air balloon in 1797. The military developed parachuting technology to save aircrews from emergencies aboard balloons and aircraft in flight, later as a way of delivering soldiers to the battlefield. Early competitions date back to the 1930s, and it became an international sport in 1952.
Jump from airplane or helicopter
A typical jump involves individuals exiting an aircraft (usually an airplane, but sometimes a helicopter or even the gondola of a balloon), at anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 meters (3,000 to 13,000 feet) altitude. If jumping from a low altitude, the parachute is deployed immediately, however, at higher altitudes, the skydiver may free-fall for a short period of time (about a minute) before activating a parachute to slow the landing down to safe speeds (about 5 to 7 minutes).
Sport parachutes – self-inflating “ram-air” wings
When the parachute opens (usually the parachute will be fully inflated by 800 meters or 2,600 feet) the jumper can control the direction and speed with toggles on the end of steering lines attached to the trailing edge of the parachute, and can aim for the landing site and come to a relatively gentle stop. All modern sport parachutes are self-inflating “ram-air” wings that provide control of speed and direction like the related paragliders. Purists in either sport would note that paragliders have much greater lift and range, but that parachutes are designed to absorb the stresses of deployment at terminal velocity.
By manipulating the shape of the body in freefall, a skydiver can generate turns, forward motion, backwards motion, and even lift.
When leaving an aircraft, for a few seconds a skydiver continues to travel forward as well as down, due to the momentum created by the plane’s speed (known as “forward throw”). The perception of a change from horizontal to vertical flight is known as the “relative wind”, or informally as “being on the hill”. In freefall, skydivers generally do not experience a “falling” sensation because the resistance of the air to their body at speeds above about 50 mph (80 km/h) provides some feeling of weight and direction. At normal exit speeds for aircraft (approx. 90 mph (140 km/h)) there is little feeling of falling just after exit but jumping from a balloon or helicopter can create this sensation. Skydivers reach terminal velocity (around 120 mph (190 km/h) for belly to Earth orientations, 150-200 mph (240–320 km/h) for head down orientations) and are no longer accelerating towards the ground. At this point the sensation is as of a forceful wind.
