Counting the Cost of Wingsuit Flying

Skydiving isn’t a cheap hobby. Taking introduction courses, buying your first pieces of equipment, and the cost of your first 25-50 jump tickets, can add up to $10,000+ over a couple of years.

To start wingsuiting, you will need to be an accomplished skydiver already, so how much does wingsuit flying cost?

Similar to skydiving, you’re going to want to invest in a detailed beginner’s course before you jump. You can hire a wingsuit and equipment to get you started, but soon enough, you’ll want the comfort and convenience of having your own gear. 

Let’s look at how much wingsuit flying costs, from working your way through the skydiving licenses to having your own wingsuit and literally flying around the world.

How much does it cost to go wingsuit flying?

We need to start at the beginning, and that’s with learning to skydive. If you’ve never skydived before and you want to learn to wingsuit fly, it’s going to be a couple of years before you can strap into a bird suit.

Wingsuiting is a dangerous sport, and there is no doubt about it. The techniques and experience you first gain through learning to skydiver will be crucial. Through your time skydiving, you’ll start to gain expertise in freefall and body positions, as well as parachuting. In wingsuiting, you will sometimes have to make critical decisions in a split second, and skydiving will make many of them instinctive. 

First, you need to find a good skydiving course to learn the basics, take your first 25 skydives, and pass the exams to get your A license. The first stage of a skydivers course is called level one, and this consists of around 6 hours of classroom time followed by your first AFF level solo jump. Usually, you can do this course for about $350 before progressing to the following stages.

An A license course will take you from level 2 to your 25th jump. This section will have 24 monitored solo jumps, and coaching is tailored to your needs. This part of the course typically costs close to $3,000.

Before you start wingsuit flying, you’re going to need lots more experience skydiving. We recommend taking around 200 skydivers and achieve your skydiving B license first.

Two hundred jumps will cost you about $600, and a B license course and submission will cost you around $1,500. Let’s also add in another $500 to cover miscellaneous things such as your USPA license, travel to drop zones, and socializing (a necessity in the skydiving community!). 

Don’t forget the equipment costs!

During the early stages of learning to skydive, it makes sense to use the rental gear. It’s usually very affordable, and on your beginner’s course, the rental costs will be included in the fees. But as you work past your first 25 skydives, you’ll want to start building your own equipment.

With your own equipment, you can get much better fitting gear and grow familiarity with it. Here’s a rough idea of the skydiving gear and costs (prices can wildly vary from second-hand gear to top-of-the-range equipment, these costs represent moderately priced new equipment).

How much is a wingsuit beginners course?

With your skydiving A and B licenses, and 200 solo jumps behind you, you’re ready to start a wingsuit flying course.

How you approach your introduction to wingsuiting is down to how much you need to learn and how patient you are willing to be. We suggest taking things slow and finding a course that offers lots of one-on-one tuition with a good mentor.

You’ll want an approach that starts with at least a half-day of classroom work. After that, ten wingsuit jumps should be enough to get your going (preferably five or more of those jumping with your instructor).

A 10 jump wingsuit flying course should cost around $1,500 and include wingsuit hire and necessary equipment.

Despite your now extensive skydiving knowledge, it’s essential to be the student once again. There are a lot of new techniques and risk assessments to learn. You’ll need to know new body movement and wingsuit control, a new approach in deploying your parachute, and even the parachute equipment you use will be different from what you are used to.

How much does wingsuit equipment cost?

Despite having a lot of excellent skydiving gear, you’re going to have to purchase a lot of similar equipment. Wingsuiting uses slightly different container and parachute setups, and as you progress as a wingsuiter, you will also want to upgrade to other suits.

There are many different types of wingsuits. You will want to start with a very beginner-friendly suit that will cost you close to $1,200, but within 50 wingsuit jumps, you’ll be ready to upgrade to a higher-performance suit. Let’s say you manage to sell your beginner’s suit for $700, and you add another $1,000 to that to get your next-level wingsuit (total spent $2,200).

Other equipment costs will set you back approx $800, as will several miscellaneous expenses such as club memberships and more socializing (of course!). So let’s add another $500.

How much does a wingsuit jump cost?

Wingsuiting from a plane incurs the same costs as skydiving. If you have your own equipment, you just pay for a jump ticket like everyone else. Jump tickets in the USA cost around $20 to $40 a trip. So for 100 wingsuit plane jumps, let’s call it $300.

Wingsuit flying is a bit different from skydiving in that a wingsuit jump will be a lot more intense and last much longer. Whereas an experienced skydiver may be able to jump ten times in a day without exhausting themself, for a wingsuit flyer, two or three jumps in a day can be a lot; often, once is enough.

When you factor in the costs of getting to the drop zone and the fact wingsuiter tend to travel further for more wingsuit favorable locations, the cost per jump can be a lot more expensive for wingsuiting due to these additional factors.

Wingsuit flying cost

Let’s total things up to give you an idea of how much you could spend getting from skydiving newbie to wingsuiting pro:

While these figures are rough estimates and it’s possible to shop around to get cheaper courses and buy good second-hand equipment, many wingsuiters will have spent much more to get this fiar.

These figures don’t factor in wingsuit base jumping. If you are looking to wingsuit base jump, you will need base jumping training and about 50 base jumps.

The dangers of wingsuit base jumping are much more significant, so this isn’t a step you can skip. Expect to spend another $4,000 to $6,000 to learn the basics of base jumping.