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Andy Torrington

Andy Torrington started his hang gliding career in March of 1991 when he took his first flight from the sand dunes at Jockeys Ridge State Park. Immediately hooked on the sensation of free flight, he moved to the outer banks for the summer and pursued his first rating. After earning his rating he returned to college, but couldn’t stop thinking about high altitude mountain flying.

He started teaching and flying in the mountains the following summer, again returning to school in the fall, this time to earn a management degree. Following graduation, he relocated to the outer banks and stayed for two years before moving to the west coast in search of more airtime.

While living on the central coast of California, he earned his living by teaching for two different hang gliding schools, mostly teaching on the beach, but also in the central valley foothills of Hollister. He also supplemented his income by building hang gliders and doing preassembly work at the Pacific Airwave factory in Salinas, and later in Marina, California.

After returning to the outer banks in Feb 1997, he continued to teach but began focusing on developing tools and training techniques for training instructors. He earned his Advanced Instructor and Tandem Instructor ratings in 1998 and became the Lead Instructor Trainer for the hang one program at Jockey’s Ridge State Park in 1999.

In the spring of 2000, he helped co-found the Kitty Hawk Kites Kiteboarding School after learning how to ride from windsurfing locals in Corpus Christie, Texas. He co-founded the kite boarding division of the Professional Air Sports Association, helped to author the Operations Manual for Kite boarding and authored the Instructor Manual that serves as a textbook for the Instructor Certification Program for kite boarding. PASA certification is now recognized nationally and is a requirement in the United States for schools and instructors to be eligible to purchase commercial liability insurance.

In 2003 he earned his foot launch paragliding rating, and currently still teaches beginner and advanced hang gliding lessons on Jockeys Ridge. Over the last fifteen years, sometimes teaching more than 50 students in a week, he has literally taught tens of thousands of lessons.