Company founded
2009
Description
You guys know I share everything with our customers so I want to briefly touch on something to set it straight. Last season, we did have some issues with our contract with the city, however we were still able to operate all season. I am happy to say that we have a contract & will be business as usual so no worries there. We will be here for a long, long time!! So what's in store for 2013? Well most of you know by now we were the first to franchise to the Houston, TX market – opening up a second location at Gloster Aerodrome in Sealy, TX in November of last year. What a warm southern welcome we have gotten! We have taken on some of the former Skydive Houston staff, as well as blended with some of our former Westside Minneapolis staff. We have also hired on Nathan and Lisa Dexter to manage our Houston facility formerly from Chicagoland Skydiving Center in Illinois – they bring us 14 years of experience in the sport! More to come from them in our managers blog! Lets talk a little more about our Houston facility.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE BUSINESS? Westside Skydivers is in its 5th year at our Winsted, MN location at the Winsted Municipal Airport. Since we operate out of a public airport, we are held to the highest of FAA standards. Our jumpmasters have combined well over 50 years in the sport. Our new facility in Houston just opened November 9th, 2012 at the private airport - Gloster Aerodrome in Sealy, TX! Each one of our tandem instructors has well over 1000 jumps minimum. Most have over 5000! WHAT SAFETY PRECAUTIONS DO YOU TAKE? Safety is our number one priority! We take the time and extra cost to drug test our employees. We employ an on staff mechanic - please welcome Jay Ferrell. We at Westside firmly believe that having an onsite maintenance facility will provide our customers a level of safety far superior than anyone in the area. WHAT AIRCRAFT DO YOU FLY? We fly a Super Caravan in Minnesota, the fastest jumpship in the area - carrying 21 jumpers with a large competition size door to 14k feet in about 12 minutes! We also have a Cessna Caravan at our Houston facility - carrying 15 jumpers to altitude in under 15 minutes!.
Go big or go home , right? Thanks to the stellar success of last year, we spent a lot of time thinking how we could be different, edgier, and of course offer the BEST customer service around! We thought offering high altitude jumps daily would be a great way to give you, our customers, a choice, and what's one thing we always hear from our customers, "I wish I could've had more freefall time!" As instructors, we have all done high altitude solo jumps, which was an exciting & amazing experience that we cannot wait to share with our tandem students! We had no idea of the success Westside would have in the first year or how we could change the look of the skydiving industry in the Twin Cities market - but wow - we found a way! As we meet each student, we never tire of seeing the smiles and the excitement as they get ready to jump. Westside's promises we'll never forget what it is like on that first jump. So for those of you worried on how we are going to do this, don't! Remember we did 2,000 tandems out of a 182 last year! For manifest, we will be doing no more than 2 passes per load. For example: 5k and 13k, or 13k and 24k and so on.
Skydiving is like any extreme sport, there are some risks. Our instructors use the utmost caution and safety is our number one priority at Westside Skydivers! Skydiving requires training and careful execution. Failure to do so result in serious injury or death. Westside Skydivers is a proud member of the United States Parachute Association. Our professional instructors not only uphold the high standards that are required by the U.S.P.A., but are also drug tested by Westside. Each jump master has well over 1000 skydives and our staff has a combined experience of over 40 years in the skydiving industry. Our pilots are professionally trained and are held to the same high standards that the FAA uses at the airlines.