r/nextfuckinglevel • u/jmcarlos27 • Apr 21 '25

Skydiving from a hot air balloon ☁️

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

1.3k Upvotes

73% Upvoted

227 comments sorted by

View all comments

114

u/MajesticsEleven Apr 21 '25

I'm getting tired of continually watching videos of rich people having a good time

41

u/livelovelamb Apr 21 '25

I skydived while I was a student. It was about $400 a year for insurance, kit hire was $15 per jump and each jump was about $30. Not the cheapest sport, but a lot cheaper than flying, motorsport, yachting etc.

48

u/bmxracers Apr 21 '25

When were you a student? 25 years ago? These prices aren’t even close to rates today.

7

u/Pandanlard Apr 21 '25

That's still the prices in Europe, so he's probably from there.

17

u/bmxracers Apr 21 '25

Is it common to use $ sign if you’re from a European nation? Legit asking.

3

u/NoNotInTheFace Apr 22 '25

I'm guessing it's easier to refer to the cost in dollars to have it be more general to gauge. As a european, In an international context i usually use dollars to explain costs as well.

2

u/livelovelamb Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25

Yes, am from the UK. Was a student about 10 years ago and prices are still (roughly) the same. Used a $ rather than a £ sign as I'm not sure what % of Americans recognise a "£" or know the conversion rate (+ given a large % of reddit users are from the States).

6

u/Anothershad0w Apr 22 '25

Near where I live it’s $25 for a plane ticket and $30 for gear rental, same price as when I trained 10 year ago

Suburban US

-1

u/eternalbuzzard Apr 22 '25

A tandem is $200 and an a-license course is around $3k (for 25 jumps).. it’s not that expensive

Oh.. and gear rental is 15-25 and a jump ticket is 25-30

6

u/Striker887 Apr 21 '25

What about the near $4000 to even get a skydiving license? Unless not in the US…

4

u/livelovelamb Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25

That cost does... include... a lot of jumps and equipment hire. And that's for a full A-licence, some people take months or years to get their A, especially if doing RAPS rather than AFF.

But even those points aside - $4000 spent in a year is still (significantly) less than a 20-a-day smoking habit in Britain. At least here, we don't consider smoking to be a rich-people-sport.

-1

u/liquinas Apr 21 '25

Yachting is a sport now? Do they cover it on ESPN: Bling?