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I would have assumed that tandem dives have a lower rate of fatality - I'd imagine that an instructor pays a bit more attention if someone else's life is at stake (this is just my intuition). edit: from a cursory google search, tandem dives are about 2.5 times safer.

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The thing that makes tandem jumps potentially more dangerous is that the gear is completely different from a regular sport rig - so it’s important to ask how many tandem jumps your tandem master has. He/she might have 10k jumps, but maybe only 200 on a tandem rig. As a former sport skydiver I wouldn’t go near a tandem jump unless the instructor had at least 500 tandem jumps.

2.5 times safer compared to anyone jumping, what about compared to the instructor non-tandem jumping on his/her own?

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