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Take to the skies at Canton Air Sports
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: July 7, 2011
It is probably debatable whether or not voluntarily jumping out of an airplane is a smart thing to do—but there is definitely a thrill to be had there for at least the 1,500 or so people a year who do it at Canton Air Sports (http://www.canton-airsports.com/).
Rodger Conley has owned Canton Air Sports since 1974.
“I started flying in 1968, and made my first jump in 1969,” said Conley. Since that time, he estimates that he has made over 800 jumps—but, at 72, he said his skydiving days are probably behind him.
Canton Air Sports is located in Alliance, in its own building on the north side of Barber Airport, about halfway between Akron and Youngstown.
The business was once located in Canton itself, at an airport that was once called Canton Municipal Airport, among other names, and that had dated from the early 1920s. Conley started his business at that airport in 1974. At the time, the airport was owned by T.W. Miller. Miller had married fairly well, if in an unusual nature. His wife, it was said, was Al Capone’s gun moll. When Capone died, she got his Florida estate. When she married Miller, that estate became his. He sold it and bought the airport with the proceeds.
But that airport was closed in 1996, and Conley moved his business to Alliance, putting his building up at Barber Airport.
In that time, the business has been steadily growing. At the same time, more modern technology has made skydiving both safer and more thrilling.
Currently, Canton Air Sports employs about a dozen instructors, who work on a contract basis. All of them have at least 1,000 jumps under their belt, says Conley, and they average over 3,000 jumps each, with one instructor over 10,000 jumps.
In order to jump out of an airplane, it will cost a few bucks, and it will take some training.
“We used to do static line jumps in training,” said Conley. “But we have found that tandem jumps are better.”
A first tandem jump, where the instructor is completely in control, will cost a little over $200, on average (there are many pricing configurations). “Most people just want to do one jump, just to say that they’ve done it,” said Conley. Tandem dives require very little training, and can be scheduled virtually at any time. Ground training can happen at any time, although jumping is only in good weather. If the weather grounds the adventure, the company will issue a rain check. The landing strip is made of sod, so dry weather is imperative for takeoff and landing.
Returning jumpers are walked through a series of jumps that give them more and more personal control. There are two more tandem jumps, and then an instructor-led individual free-fall jump.
At that point, a jumper can get an “A,” or learning, license. At 50 jumps, you get a “B” license, at 200 a “C,” and at 500 a “D.” At that point an instructor license may be obtained, and then a supervisor license.
The prices of jumping then decline according to experience. After Level Eight, for instance, when a jumper is on his own, (after eight jumps), the price goes down to $59 a jump.
Over the years, said Conley, despite the fact that the parachutes themselves have become smaller and more maneuverable, parachuting has become safer–much safer. During the first 18 years in business, Canton Air Sports had five fatalities. However, in the last 19 years, there have been “zero.”
Much of that is attributable to great advances in parachuting technology, said Conley. At this point, he said, people generally only die from excess hot-dogging.
“Most fatalities come from people’s mistakes,” he said. “Not from equipment failure. This is not as dangerous a sport as it used to be.”
Conley himself only suffered one minor injury in all of his years of skydiving, when he stepped into a hole after a landing and twisted his knee. It is a herniated disc that has now grounded him.
The United States Parachute Association (USPA; www.uspa.org) has about 33,000 members, the overwhelming majority of whom are male. For more information about parachuting, that organization’s website is a good place to start.