Parachuting, or skydiving, is an activity involving the breaking of a free-fall from a height using a parachute. It's performed as a recreational activity, competitive sport, deployment of military personnel and occasionally, forest firefighters. The history of skydiving begins with descent from hot-air balloons by Andre Jacque Garnerin in 1797. Modern skydiving has been around for about 200 years. Early competitions date back to the 1930s, and it became an international sport in 1951. Skydiving has been used in the military in the early 1900s during World War I, and used in World War II.

Typically, a trained skydiver (or jumper) and a group of associates meet at an isolated airport. A fixed base operator at that airport usually operates one or more light cargo aircraft, and takes groups of skydivers up for a fee. In the earlier days of the sport, an individual jumper would go up in a Piper Cub aircraft for reasons of economy. The first person to parachute was in 1700.

A typical jump involves individuals jumping out of aircraft (usually an airplane, but sometimes a helicopter or even the gondola of a balloon), travelling at approximately 4000 metres (around 12,000 feet) altitude, and free-falling for a period of time before activating a parachute to slow the landing down to safe speeds.

Once the parachute is opened, (usually around 2,500 ft.) the jumper can control his or her direction and speed with cords called "steering lines," with hand grips called "toggles" that are attached to the parachute, and so he or she can aim for the landing site and come to a relatively gentle stop in a safe landing environment. Most modern sport parachutes are self-inflating "ram-air" wings that provide control of speed and direction similar to the related paragliders. (Purists in either sport would note that paragliders have much greater lift and range, but that parachutes are designed to absorb the stresses of deployment at terminal velocity.)

Experienced skydivers will tell you that in freefall, one can do anything a bird can do, except go back up. Skydivers generally do not experience a "falling" sensation due to the fact that they reach terminal velocity (around 120 mph) and are no longer accelerating towards the ground. Acceleration is what causes the "stomach in your throat" feeling on a roller-coaster or other amusement park ride. Skydiving is the only aerial activity where the body is the flying instrument instead of a machine, however simple. Some people explain the attraction to skydiving by adrenaline addiction while others suggest a suicidal disposition, but these people are usually not skydivers.

Most skydivers make their first jump with an experienced and trained instructor (this type of skydive may be in the form of a tandem skydive). During the tandem jump the jumpmaster is responsible for the stable exit, maintaining a proper stable freefall position, and activating and controlling the parachute. With training and experience, the fear of the first few jumps is supplanted by the tact of controlling fear so that one may come to experience the satisfaction of mastering aerial skills and performing increasingly complicated maneuvers in the sky with friends. Other training methods include static line, IAD (Instructor Assisted Deployment), and AFF (Accelerated Free-Fall) aka Progressive Free-Fall (PFF) in Canada. See below.