Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane has never been so difficult for the high fliers of the Bell Block Based Taranaki Skydiving Club. The club, which used to operate out of the New Plymouth airport, has closed because of new regulations imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in November 2011. Skydivers in Taranaki now must wait for the few weekends each year when a commercial operation based in Whangarei, Ballistic Blondes, flies their plane down. The club has been jumping since 1977, and had always operated under the safety standards of the New Zealand Parachute Industry Association and the New Zealand Parachute Organisation. The new requirements meant they had to redo all their manuals – operational manuals, health and safety manuals, and everything else. Frank Conway (In Photo) , a skydiver who has done more than 1100 jumps, now has to look further afield for his thrills. “I have to travel a lot now,” he said. “But I quite like that I can just go and have fun now. I used to have to train people, organise the plane, the pilot, tandem master and the weather.” The nearest airfeild is in the Waikato, a 3 and a half hour trip by car, so as long as Frank can get 3-4 jumps in a weekend it makes the trip worthwhile. It’s a changing world we live in………………
