From a beach chair, parasailing in Sharm El Sheikh looks almost too simple: a speedboat pulls away from shore, a parachute fills with air, and a harnessed rider lifts off the back of the boat without getting their feet wet. What that view from the sand doesn't convey is the shift in perspective once you're up there — the familiar turquoise shallows turn into something closer to an aerial map.
A few kilometers south, Ras Mohammed National Park offers a different kind of perspective shift, below the surface, where the reef wall drops steeply at the point where the Gulf of Aqaba meets the Gulf of Suez.
How Does Parasailing Over the Red Sea Actually Work?
A rider, or two on a tandem flight, is clipped into a harness connected to a parachute-style canopy attached by a tow line to a speedboat. As the boat picks up speed, wind resistance fills the canopy and lifts the harness directly off a launch platform at the back of the boat — no running start and no water landing required for most operators on this coast.
What surprises most people isn't the height so much as the quiet. Once the canopy is open and the boat cruises at a steady pace, the ride smooths into something closer to gliding. Life jackets and harness checks are standard before every flight.
Where Did Parasailing Actually Come From?
The sport flying tourists above Sharm El Sheikh today traces back to a French engineer, Pierre-Marcel Lemoigne, who developed an "ascending-gliding parachute" in 1962. Recreational parasailing spread through beach resorts in the following decade, but the setup looked very different from what operators use now: early riders were strapped into a harness and towed up directly from the sand by a rope attached to a moving boat, with no dedicated launch platform.
Two innovations changed that. In 1974, Mark McCulloh patented the first self-contained winch boat, a vessel built with a hydraulic winch and a mast to assist the canopy, letting riders launch and land from a platform on the stern rather than the beach. A couple of years later, a 16-panel canopy design nicknamed "Waterbird" introduced zero-porosity fabric that made the parachute safe to fly directly over open water. Those two pieces, the winch boat and the sealed canopy, are essentially what still lifts riders off boats on this stretch of the Red Sea today.
See It From Both Sides
One ride puts you fifty meters above the water. The other puts a boat between you and Egypt's first national park, where the reef wall falls away into the deep blue. These Egypt Sun Travel excursions cover both.
What Are the Price, Age, and Weight Limits for Parasailing?
Expect to pay roughly $30-50 USD per person, with tandem flights priced per rider on the same canopy. Minimum age for a tandem flight with an adult is typically around 6-8 years, while solo flights usually require a higher minimum weight; operators also cap combined rider weight, often cited around 150 kg total, to keep the canopy within safe lift limits. Since these limits vary by operator, confirm them when booking, especially for children or larger groups.
Operators cancel or postpone flights in high wind or rough sea conditions, since both the launch and landing depend on steady, moderate wind rather than gusts; morning bookings are generally more reliable than afternoon ones for this reason. Industry-wide safety figures bear out why operators take that caution seriously rather than treating it as a formality: across more than 170 million parasailing rides recorded in the United States between 1982 and 2012, the Parasail Safety Council logged roughly 1,800 injuries and 70 fatalities, a rate of about one serious incident in every 2.4 million rides, and the overwhelming majority of those incidents trace back to flying in conditions an operator should have called off.
Why Does Ras Mohammed Still Matter as Egypt's First National Park?
Ras Mohammed earned its status as Egypt's first national park in 1983, protecting roughly 480 square kilometers of headland and sea where two gulfs and two reef systems meet. The park's most famous feature is its wall diving — reef faces that begin just below the surface and plunge steeply, with some surveys citing depths exceeding 800 meters in places, steep enough that divers describe swimming along the edge of a cliff rather than over a reef. The fringing reefs themselves are geologically young on a human timescale, having formed after a shift in the coastline roughly 70,000 years ago.
Inland from the coral, the park also protects a rare mangrove channel that separates the mainland from a small island, home to herons, kingfishers, and juvenile fish that use the tangled roots as a nursery before heading to open water; the same lagoons double as a rest stop for migratory birds crossing between Africa, Europe, and Asia. The reefs themselves host more than 220 recorded coral species and upward of 1,000 fish species, and in summer, divers occasionally encounter whale sharks and manta rays passing through the deeper water offshore, alongside hawksbill and green turtles that nest along the park's sandy stretches.
What Are Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef?
The park's two best-known dive sites, Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef, sit almost side by side off its southern tip, separated by a sandy saddle that local dive guides sometimes call the Yolanda Plateau. Shark Reef drops in a sheer wall thick with gorgonian fans and schools of barracuda, and its name is well earned: grey reef sharks, whitetip reef sharks, and occasional hammerheads patrol the wall along with passing tuna. Yolanda Reef takes its name from a cargo ship that sank nearby in 1980; cargo debris scattered on the slope below has slowly become its own man-made reef feature, now colonized by coral.
Boat trips into the park typically combine time over both reefs with a stop in calmer, shallower water suited to snorkelers who aren't diving. For more snorkeling options on this coast, see our Red Sea snorkeling guide, and if you are weighing up a wider range of Sharm El Sheikh excursions for the same trip, our Sharm grand tour packages guide covers the broader options.
When Should You Plan Parasailing and a Ras Mohammed Trip?
Morning departures work best for both activities, since winds tend to pick up through the afternoon along this stretch of coast. A reef-safe sunscreen, a hat, and a change of clothes cover most of what the day requires. Pairing both activities into a single day is common for visitors based in Sharm El Sheikh, since the parasailing launch points and the boat departures for Ras Mohammed sit within a short drive of each other.
Часто задаваемые вопросы
How much does parasailing cost in Sharm El Sheikh?
Expect approximately $30-50 USD per person, with exact pricing depending on the operator, flight height, and whether it is a solo or tandem flight.
Is there a minimum age for parasailing?
Most operators allow children from around 6-8 years old on a tandem flight with an adult, subject to a minimum combined weight; solo flights generally require a higher minimum age and weight. Confirm with your operator.
What happens if it is too windy to fly?
Operators cancel or reschedule for safety when winds or sea conditions are unsuitable; most offer a refund or a new time slot rather than flying in unsafe conditions.
Can non-divers visit Ras Mohammed National Park?
Yes, boat trips into the park typically include a snorkeling stop in calmer, shallower water alongside the diving, so non-divers can still see the reef.
How deep is the reef wall at Ras Mohammed?
Some surveys cite the wall dropping to depths exceeding 800 meters in places, though divers and snorkelers only ever experience the shallower sunlit portion near the surface.
