Skydiving Weight Limits Explained

If you’ve heard about the fact that there’s a skydiving weight limit, it may be making you a little nervous — especially if you’re determined on making your first tandem skydive. We understand! We want to help you make a skydive too, but unfortunately, if you’re over 230 pounds, we actually cannot take you for a tandem skydive. The weight restrictions for skydiving at Ozarks Skydive Center haven’t been set on account of prejudice; they’ve been set to respect hard physics and our dropzone’s dedicated emphasis on safety. Please allow us to explain.

1. Parachutes have weight limits.

Parachutes, like all the other tools used in aviation, operate under strict weight ranges and do not work correctly if they are overloaded. If you exceed the parachute weight limit, you very well might end up with a dangerous situation on your hands. In skydiving, exceeding the weight range can result in dangerous deployments, broken parachute lines, and unacceptably fast landings.

In addition to parachute weight limits, tandem harnesses only adjust to a certain point. After that point, a tandem harness becomes a trial to put on and very uncomfortable to wear during a skydive. We don’t want to put you in that squeezy situation.

2. The problem compounds itself.

Parachutes designed to slow the descent of larger amounts of weight are physically larger than the parachutes designed to descend lighter amounts of weight. That means, of course, that the parachutes themselves are heavier and adds even more weight to the system. It might seem like the 230-pound weight restriction for skydiving is arbitrary, but it’s really not — beyond that point, it’s a self-exaggerating problem. We care about the safety of our students and our instructors, so we simply stay under weight limits.

3. Skydiving over the weight limit just doesn’t feel good.

Here’s the straight dope about skydiving over the max weight for skydiving: If you did manage to find a (questionable) dropzone that allowed you to make a skydive that exceeded the weight limit, it wouldn’t be all that fun. First, it would be way less comfortable and way more dangerous. Second, your skydive would be over faster, your parachute’s deployment would be harder and your landing would be too fast not to bump you around. That’s not the way you want to experience your very first skydive, is it? We didn’t think so.

4. We’ll be here when you’re ready!

If you can tip the scale under the tandem skydiving weight limit, we’ll be right here to welcome you with open arms! Make a project of it. You’ll come out of it healthier and way inspired — with lots of great skydiving photos to celebrate your hot new bod, to boot. It’s within your reach, we promise; we actually know one super-awesome skydiving tandem student who lost four hundred pounds to make a skydive.

What’s stopping you from chasing a miracle? Nothing!

Check out the Ozarks Skydive Center FAQ page for additional restrictions when making a tandem skydive. Looking forward to seeing you soon!