Sixty seconds of freefall. Choose where you spend them.
What a tandem costs over Queenstown against the Whitsundays. Whether fifteen thousand feet is worth the surcharge. What a wind tunnel gives you that an aircraft cannot. Reviews of the skydives you can actually book.
Four jumps that settle the argument about where to do this.
A reef, a lake under mountains, a man-made island and a tunnel in Hampshire. Each is the version of this people fly for, with what it costs and how much of a day it takes.
- 01The reef exitTandem Skydive over the WhitsundaysOut of the door over the Whitsundays, canopy down onto the sand at Airlie Beach. The water does the work in every photograph that comes back.
02The classicNZONE Skydive QueenstownThe drop zone that turned Queenstown into a jump town. Lake Wakatipu on one side of the canopy, the Remarkables on the other.
03The expensive oneSkydive at The Palm with Photos, Video & Yacht TourThirteen thousand feet over The Palm, with the whole island laid out under you from the moment the chute opens.
04No aircraft neededBasingstoke iFLY Indoor Skydiving Experience – 2 Flights & CertificateTwo flights in a vertical wind tunnel. Nothing to wait on, no altitude, and you land on your feet.
Australia and New Zealand carry this sport. The rest is worth a detour.
Between them the two hold most of the drop zones people cross an ocean for. Portugal, the Czech Republic and the Gulf fill in the middle, and America is where almost every wind tunnel is.
Australia sells the same thirteen thousand feet three different ways.
Every drop zone here puts you out of the same door at the same height. What changes is what is underneath you on the way down, and where the canopy is allowed to put you.
For almost everyone, the tandem jump is the whole sport.
Strapped to an instructor, out of the aircraft at thirteen thousand feet, about a minute of freefall and five more under canopy. No course, no licence, and no way to change your mind once the door is open.
- 1Skydive Zanzibar | Tandem Skydivefrom $545
- 2Tandem Skydive over the Whitsundaysfrom $218
- 3Gold Coast Tandem Skydivefrom $355
The skydives that sell their drop zone out first.
Every skydive review →Auckland, Queenstown, The Palm and the Whitsundays, in the order travellers actually pick them.
1
Skydive Auckland
Skydive Auckland takes you from Parakai to a tandem jump from up to 18,000 feet, with views toward Auckland’s east and west coasts, Waiheke Island, Piha Beach, and beyond. You’ll freefall at more than 200 km/h for up to 75 seconds, attached to an instructor such as Owen. Hotel transport may be available.
From · $214
Read our review →
2
Skydive at The Palm with Photos, Video & Yacht Tour
from $680
3
NZONE Skydive Queenstown
from $222
4
Skydive Zanzibar | Tandem Skydive
from $545
5
Tandem Skydive over the Whitsundays
from $218
6
Gold Coast Tandem Skydive
from $355
7
Basingstoke iFLY Indoor Skydiving Experience – 2 Flights & Certificate
from $110
8
Tandem Skydiving Experience with Beach Landing
from $247
Eighteen thousand feet buys about thirty more seconds.
A standard tandem leaves at thirteen thousand and gives you roughly sixty seconds of freefall. Go higher and you are paying for time in the air, plus oxygen on the climb and a longer wait for a clear sky. New Zealand sells more of it than anywhere else.
A wind tunnel is not the consolation prize.
A vertical tunnel runs at terminal velocity a metre off the floor, which is the part of a skydive anybody actually remembers. No aircraft, no cloud base, no minimum altitude. Two flights come to about a minute of air time and most of an hour of your day.
- 1Basingstoke iFLY Indoor Skydiving Experience – 2 Flights & Certificatefrom $110
- 2iFLY Indoor Skydiving Queenstownfrom $86
- 3Orlando Indoor Skydiving Experience with 2 Flights & Personalized Certificatefrom $105
What a skydive costs, from tunnel time to The Palm.
Every jump on the site sorted by the price on the door. The gap between the cheapest tandem and the dearest one is mostly altitude, scenery, and who is holding the camera.
Wind tunnel flights, and the handful of tandems with a low exit.
Where nearly every tandem sits: thirteen thousand feet, video extra.
- 1Skydive Aucklandfrom $214
- 2NZONE Skydive Queenstownfrom $222
- 3Tandem Skydive over the Whitsundaysfrom $218
Fifteen and eighteen thousand feet, glacier exits, and the jumps over Dubai.
- 1Skydive at The Palm with Photos, Video & Yacht Tourfrom $680
- 2Skydive Zanzibar | Tandem Skydivefrom $545
- 3Gold Coast Tandem Skydivefrom $355
Three exits you cannot get anywhere else.
Most drop zones are a paddock beside an airstrip and a hangar with a kettle in it. These three put something underneath the canopy that people plan whole trips around.
Landing on the beach
Most jumps finish in a field behind the hangar. A beach landing finishes on wet sand with the whole shoreline watching, which is why the Whitsundays and St Kilda charge what they do. Wind is the catch: an onshore breeze over the limit moves everybody back to the paddock, and you find out on the morning, not the week before.
- 1Tandem Skydive over the Whitsundays★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 726 reviews
- 2Tandem Skydiving Experience with Beach Landing★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 382 reviews
- 3Airlie Beach Tandem Skydive Over the Whitsunday Islands★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 255 reviews
Over the Franz Josef glaciers
The West Coast of the South Island stacks a rainforest, a glacier and the Tasman Sea inside a single exit, with Aoraki on the horizon once you are past fifteen thousand feet. The weather that grows the rainforest also shuts the drop zone for days at a time, which is why the jumps that do run get talked about for years.
- 1Tandem Skydive 18,000ft from Franz Josef★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 29 reviews
- 2Tandem Skydive 16,500ft from Franz Josef★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 19 reviews
- 3Tandem Skydive 13,000ft from Franz Josef★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 16 reviews
The Palm Jumeirah
The drop zone sits on the trunk of an artificial island, so the whole pattern of fronds is under the canopy from the moment the chute opens instead of arriving somewhere in the last thousand feet. It is the dearest tandem on this site by a distance, and the one the photographs sell hardest.
- 1Dubai Skydive Tandem Over The Palm including Transfers★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 9 reviews
- 2Tandem Skydive experience in Dubai★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 7 reviews
- 32 indoor skydiving flights★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3 reviews
Four things stop a skydive, and nerves are not one of them.
Weight is the first question a drop zone asks: most cap a tandem passenger around a hundred kilos and charge a surcharge well before that. Minimum age runs from sixteen to eighteen depending on the country, and a wind tunnel takes children an aircraft never would. Cloud base and wind cancel more jumps than anything else, so keep the spare day at the end of the trip rather than the start. And the camera is almost never in the price: the video package is booked on the day and costs about what a tunnel flight does.
- 1Skydive Zanzibar | Tandem Skydivefrom $545
- 2Tandem Skydive over the Whitsundaysfrom $218
- 3Gold Coast Tandem Skydivefrom $355
By country
The drop zones people cross the world for, roughly in the order they get done.
Queenstown
Abel Tasman
Franz Josef
Sydney
Gold Coast
DubaiThe newest skydive reviews.
The jumps we have not ranked yet →
Foz do Iguacu: Skydiving Experience with Photos and Videos
Read our review →
Austin iFLY Skydiving Simulator with Instructor and Gear
Read our review →
Adelaide: Tandem Skydiving Adventure over Goolwa
Read our review →
First Jump Tandem Skydive Pattaya Include Pickup Transfer
Read our review →
10,000ft Skydive over Abel Tasman with NZ’s Most Epic Scenery
Read our review →
13,000ft Skydive over Abel Tasman with NZ’s Most Epic Scenery
Read our review →
Skydive Over Barcelona – 13,000ft Tandem Jump + Transport
Read our review →
