Skydiving Over Lauterbrunnen, and the Valley's BASE Jumping Scene

That depends on what you want from it. The jump itself is fixed by the product: 4,000 m of altitude and a 45-second freefall at up to 180 km/h, over the Bernese Oberland or, on the helicopter version, over the Lauterbrunnen valley after a climb past the Eiger, Moench and Jungfrau. At $515.00 for the airplane jump it is a significant spend, and the photo and video service is included on the bookable card. Browse Lauterbrunnen tours to weigh it against other ways of getting into the air.

The airplane tandem skydive from Interlaken costs $515.00 per person on the bookable card, matching the operator's own price of CHF 425, which is about US$516.50. The helicopter tandem skydive, which exits directly above the Lauterbrunnen valley, costs CHF 490 per person, about US$595.40, and is booked on the operator's own page rather than here. Both prices are per person and both include the full jump sequence from the aircraft exit to the parachute landing.

Both the airplane and helicopter versions jump from 4,000 m, or 13,000 ft, with about 45 seconds of freefall at speeds up to 180 km/h, or 120 mph. The whole experience takes 3 to 3.5 hours starting from Interlaken, or about 2 hours if you meet directly at the dropzone. The helicopter adds an 8-minute scenic climb past the Eiger, Moench and Jungfrau before the exit over the valley. Details are in the tandem skydive card.

Yes. BASE jumping is legal in Switzerland. A jumper at Lauterbrunnen must buy a Landing Card from the Swiss BASE Association before jumping, and that card is valid at all three sites the association manages: Lauterbrunnen, Walenstadt and Les Diablerets. No jump license is required. There are 13 recognised legal exit points in the valley and about 20,000 jumps a year are recorded. Neither the card price nor the exit-point list is published on the pages this guide draws on.

By July 2024, 68 BASE jumpers had died in the Lauterbrunnen valley, an average of about three deaths a year, according to Wikipedia's account citing the Swiss BASE Association. The valley's first fatal BASE accident, in 1994, killed Xaver Bongard, the man who introduced the sport there in 1989. A memorial to fallen jumpers and mountaineers stands in the village cemetery. This is a BASE jumping figure and belongs to a different activity with a different risk profile from tandem skydiving.

Outdoor Switzerland AG publishes no fatality or incident statistic for tandem skydiving on its product pages, and neither does this site's inventory, so no rate can honestly be stated here. A generic industry figure from elsewhere would not describe this operator and is not quoted. The 68-death record discussed above is a BASE jumping figure for fixed-object jumps in the valley, a different activity with a different risk profile, and the two numbers should never be read as one.

You can book the tandem airplane skydive, which is the airplane tandem skydive over the Swiss Alps card on this page. You cannot book BASE jumping here, because no operator in this site's inventory sells it and it is not a bookable tourist activity. The helicopter skydive is a second gap: it is official and real, but it has no card on this site, so you book it directly at the operator's own heli-skydive page.