Retention Rate

[prost 0]

Does anyone keep figures for what percentage of your tandems/AFF students return/finish?

[cvfd1399 0]

I am comming this weekend <--(Hides in shame)

[Tonto 1]

72% of my AFF L1's complete the program.

In 2002/2003 about half the members of my club were former AFF students of mine.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[pccoder 0]

Yea, I did a tandem once, and now I am a licensed skydiver, so that is 1 for 1 for me.

PcCoder.net

[thelem 0]

Tonto: What do you mean "complete the program"? Get their A-licence, or just do their Level 8?

Also, do you have any figures on how many get their B-licence. South Africa's not like the UK - if you have the money you will be able to complete AFF fairly quickly, but may well not stay in the sport. For example, our university club went to France last summer for a progression trip, we had 4 static liners (one still on the rope, the rest on freefall) and 4 AFF (IIRC all had completed a static line course, but may not have jumped).

Of those 8 students:
* The one who went over there on the rope is still on the rope, hasn't been to the DZ recently and plans to take up AFF.
* The other 3 static line students (myself included) all qualified and have visited the DZ in the last month (maybe not jumped - but thats britain for you).
* The 4 AFF students all got their Level 8, some of them possibly got A-licence too. They have been to the DZ at most twice each since coming back from france in june, and I haven't seen any up there since christmas.

There was another 20 or so students who trained on the static line courses in the UK but didn't make it onto freefall. My point was just that just because someone gets and A-licence through AFF, it doesn't mean they will be a skydiver for any significant length of time.

[Tonto 1]

At the time of those stats, A licence was 15 jumps, and that's what I meant by completion of the program. AFF here is 10 dives, followed by 2 throw-out conversion jumps, and then the student begins 7 compulsory coached dives in basic FS tehniques.

Our A licence (and D licence) recently changed to the new FAI requirements of 25 jumps, (and 500 for D) but this has only been in effect for a month and I have no stats on that. Here, our B licence is disipline specific, and many students don't qualify for a B in a particular disipline until they have 150 jumps plus, mainly cos they do a little bit of everything, and so end up knowing a little bit - and not enough to pass the airskills tests.

t

It's the year of the Pig.