Welcome to The Paragliding Academy!
Our goal is to provide the highest level instruction, mentorship and coaching available anywhere in the world.
Our connection to the global paragliding community and its top athletes and instructors inform our approach to the technical side, while our unrelenting work on our personal growth and conscious communication shape the texture of our student’s experience learning from us. We want our school to not just teach people to fly, but live as an example of how teacherly authority is held, our perspectives on what is important to us, and how we treat and communicate with one another.
We’re redefining what it means to teach paragliding.
It wasn’t our intent. We weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, and in so many ways, we haven’t. But there is something foundationally different about our approach. Not because we tried to, but it naturally emerged from who we are, what we really value, and our commitments to humane relationships.
Our Mission
We want to use our talents and experience as pilots, communicators and leaders, to share the joy, challenge and growth that paragliding can provide. Its not just an activity, it is a lifestyle that can inform so much about ourselves.
To help sow this kind of transformation, we start with earthy foundations.
It starts with expectation management- helping people understand what the path to safe and sustainable flying career really looks like. Paragliding well takes emotional intelligence, communication and self-awareness.
We’re changing things around here, and we’re starting with rock solid foundations.
Then we build up bulletproof skills, from the ground up. Literally. We are masters at ground handling, and we set our students on the same path. More expectation management, more patience, more emotional skill. This is the safest, surest way of progression.
Once we’re in the sky, all the foundation building pays off. By the time our students are flying, whether on their first flight or in an advanced XC clinic, they are calm and confident because of the work we have put in on the ground.
Hi, I’m Ari in the Air
Hi! I’m Ari in the Air, and paragliding has been my life for a long time. I’ve flown in 15 countries, on five continents, in every discipline. Comps in China, acro in Chile, cross country in Italy – I’ve seen a lot of the global paragliding culture and I’ve learned from some of the best. I’ve taught a ton of people to fly – friends, family, and strangers alike. My paragliding tutorials on YouTube have gotten nearly 1,000,000 views all over the world. My unique approach to paragliding intertwines our incredible sport with emotional intelligence and perspective, while delivering it all with the highest level clarity and articulation that I can muster. I aim to empower people to transform their lives through the challenges and experience that paragliding brings, in a similar way that paragliding changed my life. It is a high aim, but it is a satisfying and fulfilling one.
Hi, I’m Kris Holub
“when I started paragliding I took a relatively unusual path at the time – I found myself almost immediately drawn to aerobatics and received my first taste of SIV at the conclusion of my first season, and knew that this was going to become a significant part of my life. I was so captivated by acro flying that I quit my job as a successful aerospace robotics engineer and moved to Europe for 4 months, where I lived, ate, and breathed acro flying. For those 4 months I flew whenever it was flyable – all day, 7 days a week, attempting to feed my insatiable appetite for knowledge and progression.
My mission now is to combine my talents as a communicator, my knowledge as pilot, and my passion for this community in order to help others accelerate their learning curve. It is my sincere desire that every pilot I work with is able to learn as much as possible, as safely and efficiently as possible, so that they can become better, safer, and more confident pilots whatever their dreams and aspirations are.”
So Welcome to the Academy!
We’re doing things differently, and we know that you’ll notice.
Thanks for being here.