Fly Like an Eagle

iFLY's indoor skydiving tunnel will have you feeling like Superman in Frisco

Unless you’re an insane person who wears wingsuits and skims mountainsides, skydiving is the closest that most people will get to flying. But even then you have to deal with the whole idea of jumping out of a plane and learning how to pull a chute and not going splat on the ground.

Fortunately for the semi-daring out there, indoor skydiving company iFLY is coming to Stonebriar Centre mall in Frisco.

With plans to be complete in time for the 2013 holiday season, iFLY features a giant wind tunnel 14 feet in diameter that reaches 50 feet tall. For about $60, a diver gets one minute in the tunnel in which winds range from 85 to 150 miles per hour. An instructor guides divers from inside the tunnel.

The experience mimics outdoor skydiving so closely that experienced and competitive skydivers use iFLY for practice.

Chief marketing officer Stuart Wallock says that iFLY provides the thrill of skydiving without the time and money commitments required with outdoor skydiving.

“The whole idea came from our CEO, who is an ex-world champion sky diver,” Wallock says. “He wanted to create an experience where you didn’t have to jump out of a plane and [you could] have a free-fall experience inside a safe environment.”

iFLY is based in Austin, but it has locations in Seattle, San Francisco and even Dubai. Wallock says the Frisco addition made sense as a natural expansion within Texas.

“Dallas is a natural fit,” he says. “It’s got the right type of demographic and attitude toward more extreme activities.”

Indoor skydiving is safer than outdoor skydiving, which means that children as young as 3 can get in the tunnel. But the experience mimics outdoor skydiving so closely that experienced and competitive skydivers use iFLY for practice. Packages for first-time flyers range from $60 to $250. Traditional skydiving packages generally start around $1,000.

“A minute of free-fall [outside] takes a lot of cash, time, experience and a lot of risk,” Wallock says. “You’re going up in a plane, jumping out, falling and then pulling a chute, and if you want to do it again, that’s several hours. In the tunnel, you can book several minutes at a time for a quarter of the cost.”

With more experience comes the ability to truly explore the entire tunnel. Beginner divers practice perfecting the “belly float,” which is what most people think of when they think skydiving. But an experienced diver can climb the tunnel all 50 feet as well as practice diving head first and other advanced moves.

Wallock says that iFLY locations are designed to accommodate everyone — from birthday parties and company team building to physics lessons for elementary and graduate students.

“Everybody can do it, from the kids to parents,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what your physical abilities are. It’s just a great amount of fun.”

Children as young as 3 can use the wind tunnel at iFLY.

iFLY Facebook

Children as young as 3 can use the wind tunnel at iFLY.

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Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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