Diploma in Commercial Skydiving

By Donna McIntyre

1 Apr, 2007 05:00 PM5 mins to read

KEY POINTS:

THE QUALIFICATION
What: Diploma in Commercial Skydiving
Where: New Zealand Skydiving School, Methven
Phone: (03) 302-9140
Email: here
Web: www.skydivingnz.com
Course costs: $7875 for students with no experience.
$6075 for students with NZPIA A licence. Students must have their own parachute and skydiving equipment.
Starting salary: Graduates doing freefall

New Zealand's skydiving industry has experienced rapid growth in the adventure tourism market, opening up a variety of jobs in commercial skydiving.

Drop zones had difficulty finding well-trained people to fill these roles, so the New Zealand Skydiving School at Methven started the commercial skydiving course in 2001 to provide building blocks for entry into the industry.

The course teaches skills needed in commercial operations, such as parachute packing, manifest/front-of-house duties, office skills, operation, aircraft refuelling/fuel station management, customer services and - in some cases - freefall camera photography. Once a skydiver has an NZPIA B licence, 200 jumps logged and the necessary camera skills, they can work as a freefall cameraperson.

Photography is the ideal pathway towards becoming a tandem instructor because the job involves skydiving all day, every day. Those who eventually want to work as instructors need to first gain a huge amount of experience and time in the sport. This usually takes a minimum of four to six years for a recreational sport skydiver to achieve but graduates of the Canterbury course can get there in two to three years by working on a commercial drop zone.

The course runs for 20 weeks, inline with other NZQA providers. The diploma covers the A certificate in skydiving, drop zone operations, commercial skydiving, advanced skydiving and work placement.

There are four courses a year with 10-15 students on each course. Industry jobs suit school leavers and young adults motivated toward a career out of the ordinary.

THE GRADUATE
Philip Black, 31
Skydiving cameraman and graduating this month (April) as tandem instructor at NZONE Rotorua

I graduated from the Canterbury commercial skydiving course two years ago, and I have been working in Rotorua and doing further training at Taupo and Rotorua.

I did the Canterbury course as I had travelled before in New Zealand. I skydived as a hobby for six or seven years and didn't like where my career was going. I decided to save up, stop doing the usual rat race thing and turn my hobby into my job. I knew there was money to be made, plus I came from England with an exchange rate where I got $3 for every pound, so that made the training and living expenses cheaper for me.

Before the course, I didnt realise there was a full packer, camera, tandem route. I thought you would just go and do whatever job you qualified for. You get 200 jumps on the course, your skills come up and you step into a job, hopefully. Geoff Mundy was great, he's the main instructor, and he has done something like 16,000 jumps. Anything you ask, he knows about, whether its equipment, the experience, tandems or videos. This job goes straight-in as a camera job, so I skipped two years of packing parachutes. Usually packing parachutes is the first job you get, then you get a camera job for a couple of years and then you get a tandem job. Packing parachutes is good money but its not very interesting and you're not skydiving. This was going straight into a good job.

I put a video camera on my helmet and pile out of the plane and take pictures of the jumpers. It depends on the customer whether they want stills or video. If the weather is right and the customers are here, I'm working. During the summer we had only Christmas Day off.

I went into the course with about 250 jumps but I had never filmed a tandem. It's your best bet to make money in New Zealand. I did 30 or 40 photo assignments in Canterbury, practising with the filming and equipment before I came here. That was the main skill I picked up at the course.

THE EMPLOYER
Keith Gallaher
Operations manager Nzone Rotorua

Philip came up from the course on work placement, and we got a chance to see what he was like. He was pretty good.

He had the skills we needed and the aptitude and attitude, so it wasnt that difficult to employ him. He showed he had good training, different to what you would expect through the sporting or recreational side of skydiving, and related to the industry.

They were pretty good skills he learnt on the course. The course specifically targets the commercial side of the industry as opposed to most of the skydiving qualifications with sporting qualifications.

It is far more customer-orientated than the old system and it teaches them good work ethics.