Spread Your Wings…

Fancy flying over the Pyramids?

What’s on YOUR Bucket List?

Because one of the experiences on mine is to see the Great Pyramids of Giza from under canopy. Another is to jump a Herc – and I can fulfil both at one event!

Many of our skydiving dreams are inspired by a photo or video. Countless of my adventures started that way… in fact my whole skydiving journey was born from the feeling a photo gave me.  

From the first time I saw skydivers over the Giza Pyramids my soul started to hope that one day I would get THERE and DO that! A few years passed and it seemed like an impossibility, but I am close to fulfilling this beautiful dream.

Spread The Wings

Spread The Wings is an international event organized by Skydive Egypt. It aims to let Egyptian and international skydivers explore the beauty of Egypt by jumping over different historic and amazing places. The event combines skydiving and tourism in this unique country, one of the oldest civilizations in the world. There are optional day trips and overnight jaunts to see the land of the Pharaohs, which has some incredibly well-preserved ancient temples, tombs and monuments. Only some days are assigned for skydives so this is a good holiday option to take a non-jumping partner, with plenty on offer for them – including tandem jumps over the Pyramids.

Spread The Wings boogie will take place over the last existing Wonder of the Ancient World – The Great Pyramids of Giza, from the 2^nd to the 7^th of December. There are two optional extended trips to jump near the Hatshepsut Temple and over the Nile River in Luxor from the 7^th to the 9^th from an MI-17 helicopter and over the newly planned Marsa Alam dropzone from the 9^th to the 11^th. The Marsa Alam dropzone will be opened for regular skydiving activities in 2022.

Skydive Egypt was founded by Amr Amaal in early 2014 in Cairo, Egypt. He works in the field of skydiving and air sports, establishing and operating dropzones, organizing exotic skydiving events. Skydive Egypt was granted the permits for the first ever Drop Zone in Egypt mid 2019 over the Red Sea Coast at the breath-taking city of Marsa Alam. Skydive Egypt aims to establish several DZS in different locations in Egypt.

Monster Hercules

One of the best things is the aircraft – the jumps will be made from up to 15,000 feet out of the mighty C-130 Hercules. If you haven’t lived in the World Team era, or you’re not from a Scandinavian country that occasionally organizes events where you can touch this beauty, jumping from a Hercules can be a difficult dream to achieve. An Mi-17 helicopter is lined up for the jumps at Luxor and Marsa Alam.

Load Organizers 

Probably the best thing the organizers can do to make sure this event will rock is to bring together some of the best Load Organizers in the world. From my humble opinion they did that well. 🙂

FS Coaches

The belly flyers will be able to play with some icon figures in this field as Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld (Dan BC), Doug Barron and Martial Ferré will be in charge with their fun. Those names almost need no introduction but let’s not skip steps. 

Dan BC is a Monster in the skydiving community, founding member of Arizona Airspeed, 6 times 4-way and 8-way FS World Champion, organizer of numerous big-way world records and one of the best teachers I had in my journey. You can usually find him at Skydive Perris, the home of the best bigway schools in the world – P3 Skydiving. He’s a nice guy, don’t be afraid to touch him. 🙂

“Fly like an Egyptian…!”  

I’ve been dreaming about jumping over the Pyramids for 41 years and it’s finally time to DO IT!

Dan BC

Doug Barron is a multiple US 4-way Champion and a bigway organizer. Together with his teammates from SDC Rhythm XP 4-way team he just won the silver medal at the World Championships in Tanay, Russia, just one month ago. If you are a 4-way or 8-way enthusiast, make sure you check the team’s site – they are incredibly generous with their free resources. Thank you, guys!

Martial Ferré is a French 4-way and 8-way World Champion and a bigway magician. He organized the current French record of 104-way and he is famous for his “Hell Weeks” for 8-way training tunnel camps from where people usually leave on their arms and knees but ecstatic with the training results.    

Just worth mentioning that they have together over 55,500 jumps. 😎 

Freefly Coaches

The freeflyers will have the privilege to work with 2 of the best women in this field – Alethia Austin and Domi Kiger.

Alethia Austin is a Regional Captain for the Women’s Vertical World Record and the creator of LSD Vertical and Angle Camps. She spent many years in Europe at Skydive Algarve, but decided to go back home to US in 2019.  Everyone who knows her says that she is a true pleasure to have around, with an amazing energy. I really hope that alongside freefly organizing she’ll take the time in the mornings to coordinate some yoga sessions, one of her other specialties.  

If you’ve been on the fence about a destination boogie – this is the one you want to be at. I wasn’t drawn to the Pyramids much, but upon seeing them in person in June, I have been struck by awe in these monuments. And the Sahara Desert… just WOW…

The crew already signed up to come fly are so lovely and welcoming. If you don’t know a soul going, you’d be welcomed in by a really lovely group. So come on, let’s fly in Egypt together!

Alethia Austin

Domi Kiger is a Freefly World Champion with many World, European and Nationals medals under her belt. Also a Captain for the Women’s Vertical World Record and organizer of vertical record events, she is also a founding member of Joyrides team and co-founder of zerOGravity Futuroscope wind tunnel. She’s one of the best.

Together they have over 13,000 jumps.

Wingsuit Coaches

Vincent “Le Blond” Descols is an aeronautical expert and professional jumper, best known for his wingsuit BASE precision proximity flying. He is the architect of many world premiers related to human flight and is a Wingsuit World Champion. He’s CEO and founder of Skyvibration Team.

Marine Descols is an incredibly talented wingsuit flying coach and co-founder of the same team. She has the role of cameraflyer, along with that of mental coach. She’s the perfect partner for Vincent, also in love with adventure and the outdoors.

Skyvibration’s latest projects were extraordinary – they pioneered a tandem wingsuit jumping programme for non-skydivers – and combined the power of WS technology and electric turbines for their E-Wings project. 😎🔥

Between them Vincent and Marine have 5,800 jumps and 1,700 BASE jumps.

Camera team

The talented camera team is formed by Ralph Wilhelm and Adrian Daszkowski, both masters at what they do! These specialists will be watching every move. 

June 2021 event

The original edition of this event was planned in February 2020 but it was postponed because of COVID. It was rescheduled to June 2021 and they still faced some difficulties. The team gathered there couldn’t jump even though they had all the necessary permits. The organizers handled the situation in the best possible way – they refunded 100% of the event fees for the participants and took care of their accommodation, meals and internal transportation. They also offered free tandem paragliding and a day at a coastal resort.

I have more than once bought tickets to events that were cancelled and I received nothing back except heart-felt apologies, so I can only say “nice job” dealing with an incredibly difficult situation. The reality is that travelling to jump at skydiving events organized in exotic locations always involves a risk that things may not work out as planned. But the Skydive Egypt organizers are confident the situation will not repeat itself. Alethia Austin, Domi Kiger and Martial Ferré were coaches at the June event and are happy to return. Alethia explained why:

Amr is really, really great. After spending the week there, even without us jumping, I found him to be a hard worker, trustworthy, bashful and kind. That made all of us who were there to coach and the participants ready to come back to support him. And let me just say, Egypt is awesome.

Alethia Austin

Travel

Travel to Egypt is simpler than with many countries. Covid-wise, people arriving from overseas can enter with either proof of vaccination or proof of a negative COVID-19 PCR test result within 72 hours (96 hours from certain countries if the flight is long). You need a visa to enter Egypt, this can be done by a simple online application, or on arrival from some specific areas such as the US and the European Union. Full travel information is at the Egypt Visa website.

I checked out the rules to return to Romania from Egypt and no quarantine or tests are needed if you are vaccinated. Everyone should investigate their own country’s Covid travel regulations to return home, and be aware of possible changes. For example, Egypt was on the British ‘Red List’, and I know quite a few Brits who were disappointed, but Egypt moved to the UK’s amber list on 22 September 2021. After 4 October there will be no restrictions in the UK for people returning from non red-list countries, so the Skydive Egypt experience is a viable option again for my British friends. 😎

Pack your bags

I am ready to pack my bags, dream of Cleopatra’s magic, take a few of Agatha Christie’s mystery books with me and fly to Egypt in December! 

If you fancy joining me or finding out more check out the Spread The Wings website here.

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