Parachuting
action sport of exiting an aircraft and returning to Earth using a parachute
Parachuting is the descent of a person through the atmosphere using a parachute. In sport parachuting, a jumper normally exits an aircraft, passes through a period of free fall, deploys a steerable canopy, flies it to a landing area and lands. Skydiving is commonly used as a synonym for sport parachuting, although it can more narrowly refer to controlling the body during freefall before the canopy is deployed.
Parachuting is used for recreation and competition, military deployment, emergency escape and access to remote areas. International competition and record activity is administered by the Skydiving Commission of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
History
On 22 October 1797, French balloonist André-Jacques Garnerin made the first well documented parachute descent from a balloon over Paris. His silk canopy opened after he separated a basket from the balloon at about 3,000 ft (910 m). Early parachute descents were mainly public demonstrations or emergency experiments. After the development of a manually operated ripcord, Leslie Irvin made an intentional freefall jump from an aeroplane on 28 April 1919.
Sport parachuting expanded after the Second World War.
The public source identifies “Parachuting” as action sport of exiting an aircraft and returning to Earth using a parachute. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Parachuting, action and sport.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193210. The Library of Congress control number is sh85097736. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1797 and 1919.
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This entry incorporates text from “Parachuting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.