IFly and the Rise of Indoor Sky Diving

Less than a month after getting married, Alan Metni sat down with his new bride, Meryl, and floated a question. He wanted to quit his lucrative job as a lawyer and train to make the decidedly nonlucrative U.S. sky-diving team. Then 26, he’d become obsessed with the sport, spending all of his free time, and about $20,000 annually, jumping out of planes. This might be his chance to go pro—was she on board? “Amazingly, she said yes,” recalls Metni, now 50. “My wife is really cool.” The couple sold their home and motorboat in Austin and eventually settled near a parachute drop zone in Eloy, Ariz.

For the next seven years, Metni got up at about 4 a.m., did two hours of cardio, stretching, and weights, then spent eight hours flying into the sky and hurtling back to earth, as many as 24 times a day. During off weeks, he worked odd jobs—as a freelance lawyer, a car repairman, and a sky-diving coach. Meryl worked at the drop zone, organizing jumps and controlling air traffic. “Recently, I asked my wife why she’d gone along with the whole crazy idea,” Metni says. “She said, ‘Look, I just knew you were going to make a lot of money somehow.’ ”