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skyblu3

New Drop Zone opportunity (long)

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Ok, here’s my story. I have about 300 jumps from drop zones the world over but hardly any in my home country. I live in Malta, the little island in the middle of the mediteranean and we have no drop zone. Considering we have relatively good weather year round I would have thought that there would be some interest in foreign investment in a drop zone here, especially since we have joined the EU now. At least, if nothing else Malta would make a good winter home for your aircraft for those of you who are snowed in for the winter months. Or it would even make a good place for an occasional boogie.

Malta has a population of about 500,000, with about 1 million tourists visiting every year. This is a big tandem market. The only hurdle to all this is our local Department of Civil Aviation (DCA), they have the final say as to what goes on and they are still kinda in the dark ages.

Skydiving has been organized here before but never on a permanent basis. In the early-mid 90’s some boogies were organized on Malta’s sister island Gozo. An MI-8 helicopter was used and would take-off and land on Gozo’s heliport. The drop zone was a decent sized field 3 miles away. In the late 90’s a couple of boogies were organized over Malta but again with a split drop zone. The aircraft took off from Malta International Airport dropping jumpers about 10 miles away.

Malta is serviced by only one airport, Malta International Airport. Jumping until now has never been allowed over the airport, but I think it’s time we change this. Understandably an international airport has strict security control. To board the aircraft to skydive you have to pass a security gate and show your i.d., crazy but understandable. My plan to operate at this airport would be as follows:
We would base ourselves outside the boundary, near this security gate I mentioned. We could do all packing, manifest, etc.. over there. I don’t think there would be any objection to this. We then would cross the security gate geared up and ready, board the aircraft at the gate, take-off and jump. My suggested landing zone is an area called park 4 beside a secondary runway, not the main airport runway and far off from the terminal building. The landing area is the right hand side of the runway in the first picture. The security gate I am talking about is between the two hangers on the right of the first picture. See links:
http://www.maltaflying.com/gallery/pictures/009.htm
more pics of landing zone
http://www.maltaflying.com/gallery/pictures/012.htm
picture from opposite angle
http://www.maltaflying.com/gallery/pictures/008.htm

After the jump the aircraft could pic us up at the landing area and drop us off at the gate and perhaps pick up the next load who would be waiting geared up. This is not an ideal situation but it is the only way I can think of to get around the security hurdle. Or the jumpers could get picked up by an airport vehicle but I don’t know how we could get hold of one and that would be an extra expense.

The Department of Civil Aviation just point blank refuse to even open discussions on this topic. This is mainly due to some bad experiences with the previous company that organized skydiving before. There were two incidents that resulted in jumpers landing in residential areas. One guy had a very low reserve opening and landed on the roof of a house breaking his legs. Another guy on a separate occasion landed in a street after a bad spot, narrowly missing some children and breaking his leg. Because of this these morons that sit behind desks with all the authority in the world think that parachutes have no control and can land anywhere. When I casually mentioned to them about 5 years ago about jumping on the airport they laughed saying that we would land on the planes. Because of these two incidents I cannot seem to convince them otherwise. My argument to them is that times have changed and also with good GPS spotting we shouldn’t have any problems with out landings. In the past GPS was not used. I remember the instructors trying to spot from the tailgate of the MI-8. I think it involved a lot of guess work.

I need someone experienced who can change these peoples opinions, then you can start coming to Malta to skydive. If anybody is interested in setting up a drop zone go ahead and try to do it here. The Malta Department of Civil Aviation’s website is: http://www.dca.gov.mt/. I know in the U.S the USPA helps drop zone owners fight for airport access and tights to airspace, do we have anything like that in Europe? What about the Europe Air Sport Organisation I found their website, -http://www.europe-airsports.fai.org. What exactly do they do, would they be of any use to me?? I want to jump in my country and not have to travel the globe just to get a skydive. I have jumped in many places but Malta remains the most scenic in freefall. See attached pics.

What are your opinions?? Email me or forward this post to anyone you think may be interested. Pleasseeeeee…..I want to jump.

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