Hoffman, an Alexandria resident and accelerated free-fall instructor for Skydive Orange, has been teaching people to jump out of airplanes three miles above the ground for 11 years.
What is AFF?
AFF is the skydiving certification program where people who have never jumped have a skydiving instructor with them who trains them on the ground and jumps with them in the air.
Are you attached to the person that jumps?
The AFF instructors are never attached to them, you are simply holding on to them in free-fall.
How do you become an instructor?
To be an AFF instructor you go to a special — usually about weeklong — course. And basically you have to try out to be an AFF instructor. And your other instructors at the course, who pretend to be skydiving students, jump with you and make common mistakes that typical skydiving students will make. They jump and get out of control in freefall and you have to chase them around the sky and save them, signal in free-fall, they don’t deploy their parachute on time, you have to do that for them. … So it is a challenging course.
What happens if the parachute does not open?
We are required by law to carry two parachutes. Everyone has a parachute container system, it’s like a backpack, with two parachutes. And if the first one doesn’t open up correctly, you pull a handle that releases you from it and go back in free-fall, and then pull another handle that opens up your backup parachute. I had to use mine three times and I have been skydiving for 17 years, I have over 3,000 jumps.
How scary is that?
You don’t have time to get scared. You are reacting to the problem. … After you land your adrenaline is going pretty good, your heart is beating fast, but that happens about five minutes later.
— Hristina Ninova
