Skydive Toronto Inc.

The rumours finally confirmed to be truth, that the place is facing multiple court clams.
They have (as per the word from the company owners) the one million dollars law claim for violating the Human Rights, breaching the contracts, workplace harassment, regularly dropping when no VFR minima, hiring instructors illegally, providing false information about the immigration process, being represented by the non-regulated immigration consultant...who know what else.

It looks like they push for the profit so hard, that nothing else is important. And the stuff is as ignorant as the management itself. Unless they walk away.

The instructors and the pilots are spending the weekend at DZ in the trailer park with no water, no toilet, no hydro. On regular basis, some of them spend the night in the car on the parking place.
No wander they had the airplane crash few years ago.

For the sake of thew safety, this place should be closed.

I am a student skydiver with 3 jumps (all at Skydive Toronto) and even I know this is a terrible place to go. Students are there lowest priority. All 3 times I jumped (3 separate days) I arrived in the morning at 9-10am and had giving them warning days in advance saying I'd be coming. Despite this I still did not get in the air until 2-3pm on every one of these days.

They are always packed with people doing tandems and they put ALL of their instructors on the tandems. The only time they use instructors for students is when there are no tandems to go. This is normally near the end of the day. Not only this but even doing a mere thing like waiting in line to buy a lift ticket took me almost an hour of waiting. Not even exgerating this. I arrived at a little before 10am and it was almost 11am before I even go to the counter to pay for a ticket. I was then told I had to come back in check with them in an hour and only at that point would they try to find an instructor.

Despite being told over the phone numerous times prior to visits to come in the morning and them even saying they left a note saying I was coming, they still did not care to serve me.

I understand waiting your turn to go up in the plane, but this is not the case here. They are just scheduling tandems all day and won't let students schedule. Students have to work around tandems.

This doesn't even get to the money part. You are going to be paying more here than a lot of places. While their site may not look like it is a lot, don't be fooled. You are very likely to be told that you have to redo a jump meaning you have to pay full price again for the jump. Their GFP program is very dumb. You have to do a lot of static line jumps to start with. Again, good luck with this. You'll be waiting most of the day. They usually only have one pilot and of course that pilot is flying the larger plane up to 12500 and does not do the 4500 static line jumps. You have to wait for the pilot to switch over to the smaller cessna plane. Again, you'll have to wait till the tandems die down for this.

I suggest going somewhere else. Most places cost about the same, if not cheaper and will likely care more about you than this place. Even when I talked to the owner I didn't get treated any better until I said I wanted a refund. Only after saying that would he try to help me out and find me an instructor. It is all about money there. Save your time and money and go to a better place. Somewhere that has a nice community and wants to actually see students get certified.

All my reviews are being filtered on other sites so I figured I'd post here. The reviews on this site are more accurate then Google or Yelp anyway.

I wouldn't bother past a tandem, as you'll be waiting forever for your jump (be a first time static line, courses, etc). They tend to forget you exist after you swipe your credit card, and any appointments are worthless. They seem to forget not everyone enjoys staring at the sun for 6 hours.

Joe posted in 2007 and the same complaints are still being made so that basically says everything. Scooter1812 summed it up with "tandem factory".

I've since moved on to a different drop zone and Skydive Toronto has lost thousands of dollars of my money.

Sypnopsis: focus on tandem students as they are the cash cow.

A total waste of a day, booked for 2pm but so were 20 other people... Waited the whole day without a guaranteed skydive and no refund. Cannot understand the point of booking an appointment when you have no guarantee for anything, once they take the money game changes. Better take your money and donate it...a total waste of time.

I went there for some fun jumps and brought some friends for tandem jumps. Here is my observation:

USPA Skydivers still NOT Welcome. That creates very tight/closed skydiving community full of Sky Goods. Not catered for experienced jumpers who are willing to work on their skills. Not fun jumpers friendly for sure. Low attitude toward new experienced skydivers. No sport attitude. Just business. You pay for everything.
Low attitude between team members and instructors. You can hear them talking bad about each other all the time. Bad attitude toward pilots. Pilots are very professional, quiet and nice. Many of them highly skilled.

Extremely long wait times for fun jumpers and tandems. Few hours. Tandem jumps- oriented. Cessna 182 DZ. Facility is very clean.
Management problems.
Camping&accommodation problems: No outdoor washrooms, hydro, water. No bunkhouse or trailer to rent.

Little restaurant on the sight. You can relay on it. No DZ safety officer.
Nice packing aria. Large packing team.

Mostly west winds. Hangar is on the west side so landings are in mechanic rotors and uphill.
Bad relationship to neighbors. There are important rules where NOT to land if off DZ.
Rental rigs new or in good condition.
Tandem students asked to check on their instructors! Did they hook you up?
Nice colors on the wall inside the hangar.

There are few other DZs close to Toronto I would rather recommend for fun and tandem jumps for sure.

It was my first tandem jump, I had a great teacher and enjoyed his personality. Also, the facility is very clean and professional.
I look forward to them opening back up to jump again.

Came here in late-May and early June for my 175th jumps. It has a nice hangar, but seems a little-off when it comes to fun-jumpers. That's OK because I understand tandems makes them money and I respect the decisions from management.

But can I recommend people to come jump here for fun? Unfortunately not. In addition,
they have a few weird policies that feels like to milk $$ out of regular jumpers.

Otherwise, it has a nice couch for sleeping and zzz haha :)

Did my first tandem here, and it was great. Great staff, services, professionalism. Price was alright.

However my video is taking 2 weeks (and counting) to be made, and I find that a minor con.

I had heard bad reviews about trying to progress through the student program but after completing it I was impressed that they would push students through. I didn't have to wait very long, unless a FJC was done that day and there was always a lot of JM's ready to work. The only thing is after your certified is that there are not a lot of Coach 2s available. Its a great place and I would recommend it.

Good for tandem jumps. If you want to be certified in skydiving, expect to wait long time for a single jump. I would not recommend it for students wishing to be skydivers

This drop zone does NOT recognize regulations for USPA certified, current skydivers.
Made a visit with my certification and currency (previous weekend) management would not allow me to jump with my own rig and jump solo.
Management required I retrain, use student gear, and jump with an instructor.
This is complete disregard of CSPA and USPA regulations regarding certification and currency privileges.
Management Problems.
USPA NOT Welcome!

I called around several places and the vibe off the phone sold me. Actually experiencing the energy gets you hooked!

I wish there were more/larger aircraft so I could get more jumps in one day! Jump-withdrawal makes me wanna cry!

Very serious training, adamant on safety and responsibility. Good coaching, approachable experienced jumpers who put up with my incessant questioning!

Probably one of the few places where ego has been checked at the door.

I'm 39 years old, I have a wife and two kids. I get nervous driving in a storm now, so I have to say, as much as I wanted to jump, I was nervous.

My instructor (Craig) taught my course and made me feel at ease. We went over everything that can go wrong more than what will go right.

Bad winds kept me from jumping that day, but when I did two weeks later, my first jumpaster (Bart) did a great job of making me feel comfortable and reminded me to have fun! Everyone there is extremely helpful and professional. I'm hooked and I can't wait until I have enough jumps to become a part of the community that seems to live there on weekends.

I wish I had started this 20 years ago!

Thanks to Joe, Craig, Bart and everyone else who stopped to provide words of encouragement!

See you all in February!!

Friendly experienced staff, but it's a tandem factory. If you want to progress and take up skydiving as a hobby then be prepared to wait, and wait, and wait. Camping is crude no water, hydro, septic, just a piece of grass.

Thank you to the person who sent in the review on our DZ for pointing out areas where the Skydive Toronto team needs to improve. We have taken note of the service difficulties and have conducted an investigation into this incident. We will be following up our investigation with a thorough briefing with our manifest staff on how to speedily register certified skydivers who visit our DZ. Our DZ offers immediate reserve repacking service. In other words, if a visiting jumper drops in with an expired reserve pack, our rigger Jared Cole will drop all other duties and literally repack the visiting jumpers reserve on the spot.

On this occasion, Jared was in the air on his way to 10,500’ when these visitors appeared. The reserve was expired and needed repacking, which he offered to do immediately once he was on the ground. The jumper’s girlfriend argued that the reserve pack period was once every year and not once every 180 days according to a CSPA BSR (Basic Safety Regulation).

It is obvious that the enforcement standards concerning the CSPA’s BSRs differ DZ to DZ. Quoting the complainant “long story short, my bf’s [boyfriend’s] reserve needed to be repacked, so we left and went to PST. No more waiting.”

Again, we will brief our staff on how to improve the registration time for visiting jumpers, but unfortunately visiting jumpers from other DZs may be more accustomed to their operators’ policy concerning BSR standards.

Joe Chow
Operations Manager
Skydive Toronto Inc.

STI may have dropped the ball on our first visit, and my review may have been written in a moment of frustration, however they more than made up for it the second time around!

Passed through, thought it was alright. For Canada.

I had a great time at Skydive Toronto. The instruction is thorough, thoughtful and I was always put at ease without any condescension or minimization of the risks involved. All steps are well explained well with the aid of both slides, maps and videos. I was in a group of about 6 people and there was adequate time for rehearsal and questions for all. The atmosphere (a farm) is calming even idyllic though it would be nice if they had more facilities especially if you are waiting for proper weather. The location was well chosen as there are no major obstacles. The safety record is top notch.

They haven’t had a death in their entire 30 year history!

After the jump, the instructor shows the video and explains how the jump could have gone better and what you did well. There is a lot of encouragement and the criticism is constructive and helpful. The best thing of all is they encourage you to have fun!

In response to flyinchicken I know what you are saying...I was there when you were a student. STI is a fun place...no fatalities, good instructors and 5 planes. However I have witnessed what happened to Flyinchicken. My advice to anyone who faces this... Remind the DZO that part of your jump ticket price is gear rental.

I began my skydiving training at STI. I found the staff at first very helpful and informative, however after I progressed past my first 5 jumps it was very difficult to find an instructor with the time to help out a new skydiver.

In 19 jumps I experienced a strange thing where my spring loaded pilot chute went over the front of my canopy and dragged behind my main. This was very confusing and terrifying to me. The owner of the DZ, when aproached by me on this subject, informed me that he would check out the gear. I jumped the gear again after it was "checked" and encountered the same problem. This time I cut it away as it was snagged on my steering lines. The DZ owner sent me looking in a hay feild for 6 hrs in the sun for the free bag and afterwards informed me I owed him $300(can) for it as it was lost.

I almost gave up skydiving, however this weekend will be doing my 100th jump naked! There are other DZ's in Ontario that train very frightened baby skydivers to overcome thier fear of slight mals in their canopies, as well as provide them with the proper size canopy for thier body weight.