FormerHangie
En-Route
There are professionally run drop zones that will take good care of you. The chances of serious injury doing a tandem are pretty low, most likely lower than a local flight in a GA airplane.
When i did my first jumps it was a long time ago, and at a small site that used Cessna 180s. They weren't very nice looking, but they seemed reliable and airworthy.
Remember, the jump plane just takes off, climbs, does some jump runs, then descends and lands. Any extra weight is a detriment, so the interior is minimal as is the panel.
Gravity and inertia. Look at this clip starting at 4:20, there's a nice slo mo of the exit. Note that they fall almost straight down:
When I did my static line jumps way back when, if you got your arch right you could see your instructor until the static line pulled your 'chute open. He was always almost directly overhead for those couple of seconds, you don't slow that quickly.
The place where I did my jump last year charges $180-$200 for tandems, depending on the day of the week, and $130-$150 for a videographer. Jump tickets for licensed divers are $28 for a 14,000 foot ride up. As more than one wag has noted, for experienced jumpers the skydive is free, it's the ride up that you have to pay for. So, it's the people for whom you are paying.
The reason I did that jump last year was that my daughter wanted to do it for her 18th birthday. Naturally I had to go as well. That place was very professional and we had a nice Caravan to take us aloft, and I felt comfortable letting my daughter jump there.
What a skydiver does is fairly different from what you'd be doing if you had to get out of a broken airplane. They do a controlled exit, then ultimately wind up in a stable arch at 120 mph where they pull the 'chute, typically at 5000 feet. They then fly an approach in a square parachute to a flared landing. If you have to get out of a broken airplane, you pull the parachute as soon as you clear the airplane. Odds are your emergency parachute is round and doesn't have much of a forward speed. You'd then make a non-flared landing using a parachute landing fall.
I don't know that you'd have to go through the full course to get what would help you if you had to make an emergency jump. It's very disorienting to go out into the airstream and then float down under canopy, so a couple of tandems would be in order to help you place yourself once you go out of the airplane, and to pick out a landing spot from the air. The landing under a square 'chute is different than it is under a round one, so if you can find a drop zone that still teaches static line, a couple of static line jumps would be in order. They'll also teach you a parachute landing fall, which is an important thing to learn.
