It’s impossible to calculate the fatality rate per jump at the Parachute Center, because no one keeps track of how many people jump out of planes there — or how many have died while doing so. In 2018, Dause told Sacramento’s KXTV-TV even he wasn’t sure how many deaths had occurred at his business. Dause declined to speak with SFGATE for this story.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/deaths-california-lodi-skydiving-center-19361603.php
but
The United States Parachute Association does keep its own tally. From 1985 through 2022, it calculated the fatality rate for skydiving to be just under one death per 100,000 jumps. The USPA uses an estimate of jumps made by association members and its best guess of the total number of skydiving deaths in the country to arrive at that figure, according to Ron Bell, the organization’s director of safety and training. The Parachute Center is not a member of the USPA, nor has it ever been. As such, it’s difficult to put the 28 deaths at the Parachute Center into meaningful context. Dause, the center’s longtime but now former owner, has repeatedly stated that he does not know how many jumps occurred at the site. “I have no idea. We have never, ever tracked them,” Dause told The Bee, “or even tried to track them.” When pressed, Dause did note that at its height — pre-pandemic — the Parachute Center ran as many as about eight planes, some of which could carry about 20 people each. Using the organization’s fatality rate, the Parachute Center would have needed to average about 78,000 jumps per year – or roughly 214 jumps a day – over those 38 years to achieve a death rate equal to the association’s average.
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The USPA said four affiliated drop zones reported at least that many annual jumps in 2022, with the busiest coming in at just over 112,000. The average center, however, tallied fewer than 16,000 a year. Those figures are based on a survey in which about one-third of USPA-member centers reported their total numbers, according to Bell.
The article is worth a read.
