A tandem skydive pair jump with the wing of the plane and sun in view over clouds and the earth's horizon — Reporter Kailey Aiken jumps for joy at Skydive City in Zephyrhills, FL. Credit: FreeFallFilms/ZHills Skydive City

The moment Kyle Salvato’s feet hit the ground after his first skydive, he knew he wanted to do it again.

“That one moment has changed my entire life’s trajectory,” Salvato told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. That was 19 years ago at a charity fundraiser in Long Island, New York—the same event where he met his future wife, Lauren Callanan Salvato, who began managing skydive centers at 18.

Salvato told one of his best friends, Rich Muscolino, about the exhilaration of skydiving, and Muscalino jumped about a week later.

Now Salvato, his wife, and Muscolino work together to own and operate Skydive City in Zephyrhills, which has become a hub for the tight-knit skydiving community to perfect their craft, share their culture, and shape the next generation of jumpers.

The Salvatos took over in 2023, but Skydive City has been around since the 1990s, when it was opened by a group of skydivers from the Northeast. Prior to that, the drop zone was run by sport military parachuters, who opened it in the 1960s.

“With me and my wife’s experience in the industry, we bring a hands-on management perspective to an operation that was already set up to be successful,” Salvato said, from a lone desk chair in Skydive City’s hangar.

But no matter how good you are at running a skydive center, there’s always risk. Every time a person steps into their facility to jump out of a plane, they’re entrusting the instructors with their lives.

Like many sports, skydiving requires structured training and demands physical, mental, and technical skill. But when you make mistakes in other sports, you go home and ice your elbow. When you make mistakes skydiving, you could die.

To become a licensed skydiver at Skydive City, students must complete an Accelerated Freefall (AFF) program, which includes a full day of ground school; a series of progressive jumps; and training on equipment, aircraft procedures, freefall, canopy (parachute) flight and other technical information, until the the student is deemed a competent skydiver.

“I don’t think a lot of people know that dentists become skydivers. Doctors, lawyers, Congress…they become skydivers too.”
Kyle Salvato

While solo skydiving is notoriously risky, tandem skydiving is actually very safe, Salvato assures people.

“You’re more likely to get into a car accident and die driving 10,000 miles a year than you are doing a tandem skydive,” he said.

That doesn’t stop the dark jokes, more abundant than parachutes at Skydive City.

“What kind of car do you drive?” a tandem instructor asks their student while strapping them into a harness.

“Um, a Honda Civic. Why?”

“Can I have it if you don’t make it?” The instructor asks, straight-faced, pulling the straps tighter. Laughter breaks out across the observation deck.

The skydive community is small, but tight-knit. In Zephyrhills, skydivers could run into the same people they met at Skydive the Ranch in upstate New York.

“We’re kind of like a tribe in a sense, skydivers. There’s a lot of carnal knowledge,” Salvato said.

Skydive drop zones are places that seem to transcend time and space. Many, like Skydive City, are middle of nowhere, campground-esque spots surrounded by grassy fields, where airplanes, parachutes, and tie-dye fill every corner. They’re more like 1960s hippie communes than recreational sports centers.

They’re the kind of place that, when you’re looking for the bathroom, instead of asking an employee, a random lady who’s living onsite in an RV walks you there herself and tells you skydiving is “the coolest thing you can do with your clothes on.”

Besides the free-loving adrenaline junkies and jokesters, there’s far more than one demographic of a skydiver, Muscalino said.

“I don’t think a lot of people know that dentists become skydivers. Doctors, lawyers, Congress…they become skydivers too,” Muscalino said.

Zephyrhills, and Central Florida in general, have a long history of training skydivers, and are credited for bringing higher exposure to the sport. Umatilla, Florida, was the birthplace of tandem skydiving, where the first jump with a purpose-built tandem system took place just over 40 years ago, in 1983.

That system was pioneered in part by Bill Morrissey, a skydiver who jumped regularly at the Zephyrhills dropzone—and at over 80 years old, he still does. Salvato said jumping with Bill Morrissey is the equivalent of playing baseball with Babe Ruth.

Skydive City is working to make tandem skydiving increasingly accessible for everyday people.

“It’s amazing,” Salvato said, of tandem skydiving. “You are getting to experience what is likely somebody’s most terrifying moment of their life, and you’re six inches behind them.”

On the plane—it might be more accurate to call it a U-Haul with wings—two benches filled with skydivers and instructors sit in a single file line. During take off, instructors trade intricate handshakes, teaching them to students and newbies, and sharing jokes as the ground falls away.

“You can feel [the student] shaking sometimes,” Salvato said.

The plane empties out, with singles jumping first and tandems sliding forward to fill their spots. Upon reaching the door of the plane, the instructor asks, “Are you ready?” And the student tucks their neck back and might say a small prayer.

Freefall follows. Arms out, legs back, arch your body into the shape of a banana. Keep your eyes open. Try to breathe. Smile for the photos as your cheeks flap in the wind.

The instructor pulls the parachute, your legs swing forward and you float back down towards earth, heart still racing with a smile plastered across your face.

“The nerve, and then their reactions getting out, and then when the parachute opens and when they land… it is one of the most rewarding things you can do,” Salvato said.

For many first time jumpers, fear evaporates in the air. There’s no roller coaster drop sensation, Salvato explained.

In the spirit of training the next generation of skydivers, Skydive Cities hosts the University of Tampa skydive club regularly, led by President Jenna Miller, a senior at UTampa who earned her solo skydive license last summer.

Skydive UT has been working with Skydive City since the club’s inception in 2019.

In the coming years, Miller said she hopes for the club to expand, getting more students involved in AFF training, and getting more students to jump for the first time.

“It’s a gift,” Salvato said, of taking someone for their first jump. “Enjoy how you feel right now, because I’ve been chasing it for 17 years.”

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