Freefly qualifications around the world

Travelling freeflyers run into this quickly. In one country a piece of paper decides how many people you may jump with. In the next, no such paper exists and the decision belongs to whoever is running the drop zone that day.

What varies is the instrument. What does not vary is the underlying idea: at some point somebody qualified decides you are ready for a bigger group, and that decision is made on demonstrated recovery skill rather than on jump numbers.

The short version

Country	Freefly qualification?	What it controls	Who signs it off
Australia	Yes, the Freefly Crest, in Head-Up and Head-Down streams	Group size, by regulation	A Freefly Coach, the drop zone’s safety officer and the chief instructor
United Kingdom	Yes, the FF1 and FF2 grades	Progression and group size without a coach	A freefly coach, through the national body
Canada	A required briefing rather than a grade	Coached two-ways until cork-proof	A Coach 2, or a Coach 3 with the freefly endorsement
United States	No	Nothing formally; recommendations only	The drop zone
New Zealand	Nothing published that we could find	Not publicly stated	The drop zone, on current evidence

Australia: the Freefly Crest

Australia is the strictest of the systems here, and the most explicit. Freefly group size is tied by regulation to a Freefly Crest, which exists in two streams, one for head-up and one for head-down, so the approval matches the orientation you are actually flying.

The regulations set the ceilings, stepping up as the crest and other qualifications are held, and they also make an audible altimeter mandatory on any freefly descent. The sign-off chain runs through the logbook: a current Freefly Coach signs the stages, the drop zone’s safety officer is involved in approving the training descents, and the chief instructor endorses the application.

Australia also has a discipline-specific Freefly Coach approval, which is unusual. Most national bodies have generic instructional ratings and leave freefly to experience.

The documents, all current at the time of writing:

• Operational Regulations V01-2026, which sets the group-size and equipment rules
• Regulatory Schedules V01-2026, which sets the crest and coach requirements
• Training Operations Manual V01-2025, which carries the freefly training table
• Freefly and Angles Guide, August 2023, the educational companion

United Kingdom: FF1 and FF2

British Skydiving uses graded qualifications instead of a crest. FF1 is the head-up grade and FF2 follows it. Entry to freefly training requires FS1 first, which is the belly formation-skydiving grade, so the belly-competence-first principle is written into the pathway rather than left to advice.

Without a coach, the group size is limited to three people. The freefly coach qualification is applied for on its own form.

One wording nuance is worth knowing if you are reading the manual yourself. The clause carrying that group-size limit refers to a formation-skydiving coach and to formation skydives, which reads like a carry-over from the surrounding formation-skydiving text. Check the current edition and ask locally rather than assuming which reading applies.

• Operations Manual, November 2025, Section 2, paragraph 6.6
• Freefly Coach application, Form 134D

Canada: a briefing, and a coach until you are cork-proof

Canada takes a different route, and it is the one closest in spirit to how coaching actually works. Rather than a freefly grade, there is a required Freefly Ground Briefing, which forms part of the application for the B Certificate of Proficiency. It is delivered by a Coach 2, or by a Coach 3 holding the freefly endorsement.

The briefing’s substance is what makes it interesting. It keeps a flyer on solos or two-ways with a coach until they are cork-proof, and it puts freefly last in the exit order. So the approval point is a demonstrated recovery skill rather than a document, which is the same judgement an Australian coach is making on the way to a crest.

• Freefly Ground Briefing 2022
• Coach 3, Freefly

United States: no freefly qualification at all

There is no freefly rating and no freefly credential in the United States. Freeflying is covered in the Skydiver’s Information Manual as recommendations rather than rules: hold a licence, get instruction from a rating holder with real freefly experience, be proficient on your back before going head-up or head-down, and use freefly-friendly equipment.

Because none of that is a regulation, group sizes and progression are drop-zone policy. In practice that means a good American drop zone often runs a stricter freefly programme than its rulebook requires, and a poor one may run none at all. The variability is the point to plan around when you travel.

• Skydiver’s Information Manual, section 5-2. Note that this chapter has been renumbered over the years, so older articles may cite it as 6-2.

New Zealand: nothing we could find published

New Zealand is the hardest of these to answer, and we would rather say so than guess.

Skydiving in New Zealand sits under civil aviation rules, through organisations certificated under Civil Aviation Rule Part 149, which is a different arrangement from a federation publishing its own operations manual. The sport body’s public pages list freestyle, freefly and vertical formation skydiving as disciplines, but attach no grade, no group-size figure and no coach rating to them.

The document that would settle it is the sport body’s standards and procedures manual, and it sits behind a members-only login. There is no archived public copy. We read the published requirements for the parachutist certificate with B endorsement directly, and they contain jump counts, formation-jump counts and an exam, with nothing freefly-specific.

So the honest finding is that nothing freefly-specific appears in New Zealand’s public documentation, which is not the same as confirming nothing exists. If you are jumping there, ask the drop zone and ask to see the current manual section.

One correction while we are here: a claim circulates online that a freefly safety course is a prerequisite for the New Zealand B endorsement. The published requirements do not support that, so treat it as unreliable until a primary source says otherwise.

• Certificate with B endorsement requirements
• Document library, where the standards manual is members-only

One harder example, for contrast

France is worth a mention because it draws the line hardest. Freefly access is tied to holding a specific brevet, and without it there is no freefly, full stop. That is a cleaner binary than anything in the English-speaking systems, and it shows how wide the spread really is. See the French federation’s freefly instructor documentation.

We did not verify South Africa or Germany either way, so they are left out rather than guessed at.

What they all agree on

Strip away the paperwork and four things survive in every system that has anything at all to say.

• Belly skills come first. Australia requires a certificate class and a course of instruction, the United Kingdom requires FS1, Canada ties the briefing to a certificate application, and the American recommendations say the same in softer language.
• Back-fly before vertical. Recovery capability, not position quality, is what everyone is really screening for.
• Groups start small. Two or three people is the default ceiling everywhere until somebody qualified says otherwise.
• Someone qualified decides. Whether they sign a crest, a grade, a briefing record or nothing at all, a person is making a judgement about you. That judgement is the actual approval point, and the document is only the record of it.

That last one is why this project publishes competency criteria rather than a qualification. The criteria are what a coach is judging against, and they travel between countries even where the paperwork does not.

A note on currency

Regulations change, and every figure above is tied to the document edition named with it. The Australian regulations were the 2026 editions and the training manual the 2025 edition at the time of writing; the British manual was the November 2025 edition; the Canadian briefing was the 2022 version. Check the current edition before relying on any of it, and where a rule affects a jump you are about to make, ask the drop zone rather than a website.

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Advisory, educational content, not regulatory or legal advice. This is a summary of other organisations’ published requirements and it may be out of date or wrong for your situation. Always comply with your national federation’s current rules and your drop zone’s policies.