Black Knights Skydiving Centre is the longest running parachute centre in the UK
Skydiving Safety
Your Safety
Black Knights Skydiving Centre is the longest running parachute centre in the UK. We have been operating for more than 60 years making us one of the most established parachute centres in the country. The safety of all our customers and staff is our number one priority and is at the forefront of everything we do. All our instructors are extremely experienced and have the main objective to get you up in the air and back down again as safe and as possible whilst still making sure you have the best day ever.
Over the years we have been lucky enough to take over 15,000 tandem students to experience a thrill of a life time. We are rated number 1 on Trip Advisor for Outdoor activities in Lancaster and have received the certificate of excellence for 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Black Knights always work in accordance with British Skydiving rules and regulations. All of our instructors are BS (British Skydiving) qualified and are extremely experienced with all of them having thousands of jumps under their belt. All instructors must remain current in accordance to the Safety Procedures and the British Skydiving Operation Manual.
All parachuting equipment is all of high quality and is regularly maintained by our experienced British Skydiving qualified packers.
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Skydiving Safety
How safe is skydiving?
There are different types of skydiving and it’s important to make that clear. The more technical sport of skydiving has a fairly low risk level, but there is an element of risk. Our static line jumps and tandem jumps are really safe and as the other content on this page will tell you has built in fail safe features. As with any action sport, parachuting can never be entirely risk-free.” (BPA, 2017).
Stated below are the current statistics in skydiving that has been conducted by the British Skydiving.
The injury rate is about 1 injury/1100jumps and varies a little by gender (slightly higher risk for women). The all-time tandem fatality rate is about 0.15 per 100,000 jumps (1 in 653,000) and there were no tandem fatalities in the UK in the last 20 year block studied (1997-2016). When you compare these statistics to other sports such as Mountain Hiking (1 death in 15,700), it is clear that skydiving is a lot safer than it is made out to be.
Although skydiving can sound dangerous and might not seem like the safest activity to participant in, chances are you participant in day to day activities that might seem risk free however they actually are much risker, such as driving your car on the motorway.
Tandem Skydiving is the safest option for first time skydivers. Rather than deploying the parachute and steering the canopy on your own you’ll be strapped to an extremely experienced instructor that’s will have many, many jumps under their belt.
Skydiving Safety
What happens if the parachute doesn’t open?
Although it is low risk that your main parachute will fail to open properly, it can sometimes occur. All skydivers must be equipped with both a main parachute and a reserve parachute. All Black Knights equipment are fitted with an Automated Activation Device (AAD), which will automatically deploy the reserve parachute if the jumper is unable to do so.
At Black Knights all our Tandem equipment is highly maintain and we use Sigma Tandem Systems which are top of the line and are the best in the industry.
Skydiving Safety
I’m wondering what the landings are like?
You will be required to lift your legs up for landing, unable to do so will result in injury. To minimise this risk, we require all tandem students to demonstrate lifting their legs up during the safety briefing. Most landings are soft, and most tandem instructors will land you doing a sliding sit-down position. Sometimes the instructor may make a gently stand up landing, if the weather conditions are suitable.