Welcome To Skydive Carolina

Hello friend and welcome to Skydive Carolina! Whether you’re new to the Carolinas or have lived in the region for 30+ years, it’s very possible that you didn’t know we were here! Please allow us to introduce ourselves.

Skydive Carolina came to be in June of 1986, the vision of our founder Danny Smith, a former Vice-President at First Union Bank (the bank that became Wachovia which became part of Wells Fargo). After taking early retirement, Danny went all in to build his dream – a full-service skydiving center that would be comparable to the operations of his mentors of the day. Today, Danny is still actively involved and can be spotted walking around the grounds or most often on his riding mower (the place he does his best thinking).

We thought we’d take a moment to share a little about ourselves – what we do here, who we are and share some things that you may not ever have known about.

Chances are if you’ve never been here before, you’re in for a surprise. Before arriving at our facility, many people envision a tiny plane operating out of an old beat-up hangar. That’s not who we are. Our “skydiving campus” or “dropzone” is a full service center which includes a huge main hangar (lots of room for packing parachutes), competition team training rooms, a full-service rigging loft, gift store, onsite bathrooms and showers, a snack bar and the Rolls Royce of skydiving aircraft – a 23 passenger deHavilland Twin Otter. One thing you’ll definitely note is just how clean everything is – we don’t like clutter!

More than 30,000 skydives are made at Skydive Carolina each year!

Our center is usually buzzing with activity with licensed skydivers who travel far and wide to jump with us alongside guests making their first-ever jumps from all over the Carolinas and even in the world! (Name the country, we’ve hosted someone from there!)

As you’ll see when you get here, our community is passionate! We love the sport of skydiving and we love sharing it with people who have always wanted to do it! To that end, we’re big on fun, but bigger on safety as you can’t have fun if you’re not taking the steps to be safe! (Skydive Carolina just hosted Safety Day on March 7th which brings the entire community together for safety-focused workshops).

Skydive Carolina is a dropzone that values safety, quality, service, and innovation. We view ourselves as partners with our customers, our staff members, and our community. We aim to inspire and motivate those around us while encouraging learning and teaching. Skydive Carolina will remain committed to teamwork, camaraderie, and accountability to reach our goals of delivering services better than anyone else. We will develop leaders for the skydiving community.

Of course, we do a lot of skydiving here, but the type of skydiving is what makes us unique. Skydive Carolina is a full service training center which allows folks to realize their dream of skydiving just one time or becoming a licensed jumper. Many people arrive here with goals of flying in a wingsuit and of course, learning the fundamentals is where that begins (we have an active wingsuit community here).

Skydive Carolina offers tandem skydiving for first timers as well as a training program known as Accelerated Free Fall (AFF) which teaches people how to become solo, independent skydivers. From there, we offer training programs to help people become coaches as well as camera flyers, tandem instructors and AFF instructors. If you’ve got a dream for skydiving, we can help fulfill it!

Simply put, air traffic and the need to be away from it! Charlotte Douglas International Airport is one of the busiest airports in the United States which doesn’t bode well for skydiving. If you start researching skydiving centers in the US, you’ll begin to notice that none are near metropolitan areas and are normally found 30 to 60 miles from the outskirts of the city. We are no different.

If there’s one thing we’re known for, it’s our hospitality. You will be welcomed here! We believe a great experience goes beyond the service we provide. A great experience means that we pay attention to the needs of the guest experience before, during and after the skydiving event. We love what we do and we can’t wait to show you our world!

Are you ready to skydive with us?