Flight-1 New Course Offerings

Flight-1 is the world leader in canopy education and progression. From novice pilot through the upper echelons of competitive canopy piloting, Flight-1 has a course that fits every skydiver’s skill set and learning objectives. Flight-1’s courses are set apart from many other canopy courses by the fact that they have been developed by members of the PD Factory Team, which has some of the world’s best canopy pilots and the most experienced canopy coaches involved.

If you have any doubts about the skills possessed by the PD Factory Team, taking a look at the video of the “Threading the Needle” stunt they performed last October will show that you’re in the best hands.

For years Flight-1 has offered a curriculum for group coaching in canopy handling skills. Their curriculum provides a clear progression for skydivers of all experience levels to continually learn and improve from basic to expert canopy handling skills. Flight-1 courses have been extremely popular over the years and shown great success.

Flight-1 have just added 5 new course modules (103 / 201A / 202A / 301 / 302)

Airmanship (103): This course follows on from their course 101 “Flying The Modern Wing and course 102 “The Canopy Performance Range”. In “Airmanship” Flight-1 will focus on bringing the skills skydivers have developed into what would be considered a general skydiving environment. The course will revolve around the fundamentals of the skydiving environment, managing the variety of skydivers on a jump to understanding the dropzone environment. It also includes discussions on canopy choice, equipment malfunctions, and avoiding and successfully dealing with canopy collisions.

Modules 201A and 202A, “Flying Relative” and “Team Flying” respectively; are designed for individuals that are looking to hone their canopy skills and further develop comfort in flying around other parachutes.

Flying Relative (201A): This is the first step in the Flight-1 Air to Air Program. After a safety briefing, the student is introduced to flying relative to another canopy piloted by the coach. Here the pilot learns the true reference of how canopy controls affect the system relative to each other in a one on one environment with an experienced coach guiding them through the jumps.

Team Flying (202A): This course leads the student into dynamic team flying and landings. It builds on relative flying, teaching the student advanced dynamic formation flying, turns and landings. The "ultimate wind tunnel" for canopies.

The final two courses currently being offered are Precision Performance (301) and Competition Canopy Piloting (302).

Precision Performance (301): This course is targeted towards experienced pilots who want to develop their turns and high performance landings. It introduces a logical progression toward increasing power, bringing accuracy into the landing, and preparing to navigate courses and gates.

Competition Canopy Piloting (302): This, the course covers the fundamentals of competing that all skydivers need when new to the competition environment. It helps the pilot focus on what is important and how to manage personal skills and tactics to ensure best performance.

Flight-1 courses will now be open to more skydivers, as they have decided that while still firmly believing that the best approach is to go through the curriculum in order, the real importance is ensuring that education opportunities be maximized. So long as a skydiver has met the requirements listed below, they will be able to attend the course.

Flight-101:

Cleared to self-supervise


Flight-102:
Attended 101


Flight-103:
Requirement - B license

Recommendation - Attended & completed Flight-1 101 & 102


Flight-201:
Requirement - Min of 200 jumps

Recommendation - Attended & completed

Flight-1 101 & 102
Flight-202:
Requirement - Min of 500 jumps

Recommendation - Attended & completed Flight-1 201


Flight-201A:
Requirement - Attended & completed Flight-1 101 & 102


Flight-202A:
Requirement - Attended & completed 201A


Flight- 301:
Requirement - Min of 500 jumps OR CP Competitor in the last year

Recommendation - Attended & completed Flight-1 201 & 202


Flight-302:
Requirement - Min of 500 jumps OR CP Competitor in the last year

Recommendation - Attended & completed Flight-1 201 & 202