Being in a wind tunnel is kinda the opposite of being in the well but...

Did you ever host MLYLT?

Nah, I think he only works with the physically disabled, not the socially and psychologically disabled.

Question for Jabroni - How much does the skydiving community look down on you indoor types? I'm sure the true adrenaline junkies think you're a bunch of pussies, but I hope they have the decency not to say it to your face.

Of course I understand most of you have probably never been to iFLY and are not members the the skydiving community and so are not aware that iFLY has quite a bad rap with regards to working conditions and treatment of its employees. As far as just brining them clients, that’s not the extent of what I was doing, being an instructor I was coaching these events myself with the help of my friends, most of which are still with the company.

There was no issue with anything I was doing until I quit. IFLY is known to not be fond of instructors who quit as it is an investment for them to put you through training. This probably led to my former GM stopping me from running events in Dallas. At the time I had quite a large number of families that I was working with in the Dallas area who where quite upset. I made numerous phone calls to corporate and eventually they backed up the GM and said that they would allow the individual locations to decide. Of course I had to tell everyone I was working with that I could no longer operate which caused a bit of backlash on social media likely putting a target on my back.

So I announced that I could no longer host events in Dallas but planned to do so in Ft. lauderdale and at a number of other locations. That is when the VP got involved and made the call to not allow me to operate. The only thing I could have done to no upset corporate, is had made up some lie that I just decided to stop doing charity events in Dallas in order to minimize social media backlash.

Lol I have 600+ skydives, a number of BASE jumps, I fly wingsuits, and also coach skydiving. There’s a picture of me in the sky right there in the thread. Black and green suit. But no I don’t look down on my friends who just fly in the tunnel. If you’d like, I’d be happy to take you up.

Diablo,

That’s not how iFLY works, you can fly as much time as you pay for. You either buy one of their starting packages, a return package, or you are an account holder. Most people who are serious flyers or who host events are account holders. The last time I tried to do an event they closed my charity account and returned me the money which I then donated to the foundation that I was bringing. They went to iFLY anyways without me which I was happy they at least got to go. I would purposely hold all of my events on week days during hours when the tunnel was completely empty, maximizing the upside for the company by using down time.

Now we're getting somewhere. So after being banned from hosting events in Dallas, you created a social media backlash against iFLY, in particular the Dallas sector.

You then attempted to move business from that area down to Florida, so the VP put a stop to it.

Is that a fair assessment?

So is it possible that:

1.) training an ifly employee is fairly expensive to a GM's bottom line.
2.) you quit after a fairly small amount of time making the cost of your training vs. the value of your time employed pretty high.
3.) this pissed off a GM with some sway within the company and that has put you personally on the outside looking in.

^ This

It's telling Gabe breezed right over "social media backlash" at the end of a long post imo.

Didn't read all the thread but did you actually fly? If so why would you do that indoors? I feel like you could accomplish much more flying outside.

That’s exactly what I said. However, I’m not on the outside looking in, like I mentioned I can go fly tomorrow if I want, so it hasn’t effected me in that sense. It did however leave a lot of the people I was working with feeling like they are. As far as my time their, It was short for sure, but not like I left after 2 weeks either. Also, I was under no contract to stay for any period of time.

As far as the social media “backlash,” I simply put out the truth, that dallas would no longer allow me to do events there. It wasn’t like I came or cursing them or anything like that, I put out their words verbatim so as not to misconstrue anything or leave anything to my own interpretation. Naturally this upset some people. I guess if you think that iFLY is correct in their action because I “upset” them, then that’s fine and you are entitled to that opinion.

Yea that’s iFLY tell #46

Yes, I jump on a regular basis but no that’s not true. My 600 or so skydives equates to roughly 10 hours of actual free fall time, I probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 tunnel hours. Also, in the sky you have unlimited space in which you have little to no point of reference to analyze your body position and how it is affecting your flight. In the tunnel, not only can you fly for extended periods of time, but you are surrounded by walls, forcing you to correct all of the bad habits which can be developed by solely skydiving. The wind tunnel is a great tool and all the best skydivers in the world put in a lot of work there.

Is the skydiving community kind of like the poker community? I saw someone skydive on TV once. Am I a member of the skydiving community?

Some people call tunnel diving the "pussy" way to skydive. Do you feel like a pussy when you do it?

Have you tried contacting the Better Business Bureau? My grandpa told me they're a powerful lobby group for consumers to get stuff done.

Lmao, yes and yes.

I don't necessarily think they're correct in what they have done, but it makes everything a lot more explainable.

What was your reasoning for relocating from Miami to Dallas in the first place?

Hey Gabe - Thanks for the work you are trying to do; as others have mentioned, it is very admirable. I have a few questions, hopefully you can find the time to answer:

1) Who are iFLY's competitors and have you attempted to fly with them?

2) Would these special needs kids get the same benefit from actual skydiving, or is there some reason that is not an option?

3) When you say that you are "hosting" Flying for a Cure events at an iFLY tunnel, what does that look like? How is it any different than any other regular customer showing up to fly?

4) If you are only being told that you can't host Flying for a Cure events, is there any way you can do all of the things you consider "hosting" at a separate location, then just take the family to the tunnel to fly as a regular customer?

5) Did you ever consider approaching iFLY with a business/marketing plan for creating their own nonprofit type corporation to do exactly what you're doing, so that it becomes a benefit to them and they could control the marketing/messaging, instead of it being a potential competition/conflict?

Seems like you and iFLY are missing out on a business opportunity here and as others have mentioned, it really doesn't make sense from either perspective.

I think part of what doesn't make sense with your thread is that there seems to be so many options for you and instead of coming up with creative solutions for a great cause, you are wasting your time making posts on random message boards.

In general, you come across as very adversarial and a bit vindictive (seriously, did you really need to post the full name of the Dallas GM?), which may explain why you're having such a hard time with this. Another example is how you portray your coworkers who didn't share your passion and didn't want to help you. Perhaps if you had just raised a bit more money to pay them, get them involved in any way, maybe after they saw the benefit of what was going on, they would have donated that money back or agreed to provide their services pro bono in the future.

Just because someone doesn't agree with what you're doing, doesn't mean you can't persuade them in the future. Stop seeing those people as enemies and think about how you can motivate them to join in on what you're doing (even if that motivation is monetary).

Thanks again for the work you're trying to do and good luck with your endeavors.

I hear you man, my apologies if my OP seemed in anyway misleading, it was so long as it is, kind of hard to get every question I might be asked into the first post. But to answer your question, I moved their specifically to work for IFLY as that is where they had an instructor opening at the time.

Do you want a cookie?

Hey, thanks for your response and your questions I will definitely answer but until tomorrow I am on my phone with very limited service and the correct response will be lengthy. But in short, there are no other operating tunnels in North America. IFLY is a monopoly due to their patents and has been known to sue the living daylights out of anyone who tries to get around them.

Yes my events where different in many ways than attending an iFLY “all abilities night” (I will elaborate when I get to a computer). No, skydiving would not offer any of the things I was doing and to begin with you must 18 to skydive in the US. I would take kids as young as 3 years old in the tunnel.

As far as my attitude or “vindictiveness,” I guess that’s my bad, I’m only human and obviously passionate about the issue. I could have definitely left that out but the reality is any person could just click on he website and you will see the full name and picture of every GM in the company, if the mods would like to edit that out though that’s fine with me but unfortunately I can no longer edit that post.

All the best,

Gabe

Of course, I love cookies 🍪

All the best,

Gabe


Mason has really upped his troll game!

Yeaaa buddy 💪🏽💪🏽

Gabe,

I think it's great you've been helpful to disabled people and hope you're able to spin this into a bigger, community wide effort. Your former employer could end up regretting how things ended.

Think of it this way: how would a business feel if they overlooked a candidate that grew up to be Bill Gates? You have a chance to become a force in the world of helping disadvantaged people take flight.

Seize the day!

Tuma

Jab,

You are still able to go to ifly, and the special needs people are still able to go. What things did you want to do beyond just going with them that ifly won't let you do? It doesn't sound like ifly is preventing you from booking a group outing with these people. Why aren't you doing that?