Empty leg flights to and from Cape Town

Cape Town lies near the south western tip of Africa, between Table Mountain and the Atlantic, where the Cape Peninsula runs south to Cape Point. Table Mountain was named one of the New7Wonders of Nature in 2011, Robben Island has been on UNESCO's World Heritage list since 1999, and the Cape Floral Region, the smallest and richest of the world's six plant kingdoms, joined it in 2004. Constantia's vineyards lie within the city itself, inland are the Winelands of Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl, and along the coast to the east are the whales of Hermanus. Britain sends Cape Town more visitors than any other country, South African time is only one or two hours ahead of London, and a long range jet flies there nonstop in about 11 hours 40 minutes.

Private flights use Cape Town International Airport, code CPT, on the Cape Flats about 20 kilometres east of the city centre. Further down we look closely at the airport and its two main FBOs, the slots, permits and declarations that shape a flight, the drive or helicopter hop to the Waterfront and the Winelands, the charges, the other airfields around the Cape and the empty sectors on offer today.

Cape Town sectors available today

Our live list below covers every sector now offered in or out of Cape Town. On days when Cape Town itself has few, it also shows flights at George, Lanseria and Johannesburg, the airports a safari or a Garden Route trip usually passes through. The second table gives full charter prices for the jets that fly these routes, so you can see how much an empty leg saves.

Why jets fly empty between Britain and Cape Town

Cape Town is almost twelve hours from Britain by air, and a trip that long, packed into a few summer months, leaves a great many aircraft flying without passengers.

On our list, Cape Town sectors to and from Britain cluster between December and March, above all in the days just before Christmas and the first two weeks of January, and flights heading home to Britain appear more often than those going out.

Shorter sectors inside South Africa turn up as well. At the end of September 2026 an international listing site showed, among others, a Citation Mustang from Lanseria to Cape Town on 17 October for about 8,000 US dollars and a Pilatus PC-12 from O.R. Tambo on 5 October for about 5,600 US dollars, each for the whole aircraft, the kind of sector that can link a safari with the Cape.

Cape Town International Airport in detail

The airport opened in 1954 as D.F. Malan Airport, named after the prime minister of the day, and took its present name in the 1990s. It is run by Airports Company South Africa, ACSA, and is the country's second busiest airport after O.R. Tambo in Johannesburg. A single central terminal building, finished before the 2010 football World Cup, links the domestic and international sides, while business aviation has its own General Aviation Area with two main FBOs. In 2025 the airport handled a record of about 11.1 million passengers.

For now Cape Town depends on one long runway, and that is its weak point. On 4 August 2026 a Kenya Airways Boeing 737 burst a tyre on landing and came to a stop on the main runway, which stayed closed until the aircraft was moved in the evening; arriving flights diverted and international departures were held, while domestic departures continued. ACSA plans to replace the main runway with a new one of 3,500 by 60 metres, shifted about 210 metres east and turned by about 11 degrees, long enough for the largest airliners and budgeted at more than 6 billion rand. The project reached the procurement stage in 2026, a contractor is expected to be appointed by December, and the building work is planned to take about two years. ACSA's wider programme, worth more than 10 billion rand in all, is to add aircraft stands, seating and faster immigration processing to the international terminal, and work on the domestic terminal is due to begin in April 2027.

Crews and planners should also expect congestion. Flight support company Just Aviation describes strict slot coordination in the peak season and limited parking when demand is high. Landing permission is officially requested three to five working days ahead, although OPSGROUP warned in 2026 that seven to ten days is more realistic, and any foreign operator carrying paying passengers needs a Foreign Operator Permit before it can fly into South Africa at all. An empty leg removes much of that work, because the operator has already arranged the permits and the slot and only needs to add the passengers' details.

Many charter websites get Cape Town wrong. A British booking platform puts the airport 29 miles from Table Mountain, when the drive to the lower cableway station is about 25 kilometres, or 16 miles. A large British broker calls Kirstenbosch a national park, although it is a botanical garden, misspells Table Mountain National Park and describes the Bombay Bicycle Club, a restaurant on Kloof Street, as the oldest gentleman's club in the world, a title usually given to White's in London, founded in 1693.

The airfields cause even more confusion. A global jet operator recommends Stellenbosch for the Winelands and calls Morningstar Airfield ideal for smaller jets, although both are small fields for light aircraft. Two brokers list Ysterplaat, a base of the South African Air Force, among the convenient airports for private flights, and one praises the flexibility of its 1,585 metre runway while giving the distance from the international airport to the city as 18 kilometres in one paragraph and 20 in another. An American broker offers Fisantekraal, now Cape Winelands Airport, whose longest licensed runway today is 900 metres.

Pages in French and German add their own gaps. A German charter site files Cape Town International as a Verkehrslandeplatz, the German category for a minor public airfield, although it handles more than eleven million passengers a year. A French platform headlines its South Africa page with 2026 prices and then leaves the price table empty. What we write here is checked against ACSA, the FBOs, SARS, GOV.UK and the operators who fly the routes.

A second round of reading, across British, Swiss, French, Spanish and American sites, found more slips. A European broker, one of the few to mention the new Traveller Declaration, places the airport 13 kilometres south east of the centre, when it lies about 20 kilometres east by road. A Swiss broker lists a third FBO under the Swissport Executive Aviation name, which we could not find in the FBO directories for Cape Town. A North American booking platform promises that most travellers are airborne within 15 minutes of reaching the FBO, although an international departure means passport control and customs, for which flight support companies allow 30 to 60 minutes. A charter website quotes about 10 hours from London, when even the fastest long range jets need about ten and a half hours or more.

Signature, ExecuJet and the private side of Cape Town International

Private passengers at Cape Town are handled away from the airline terminal. Two main FBOs in the General Aviation Area look after the aircraft, the passengers and the paperwork, and each has its own lounges and meeting rooms.

With two main FBOs, one of them staffed around the clock, Cape Town suits an overnight flight from Britain, leaving in the evening and landing the next morning after 11 to 12 hours in the air.

From the steps to the car at Cape Town

An arrival at the General Aviation Area is quick once the paperwork has been sent ahead, and leaving follows the same steps in reverse.

Most delays at Cape Town have nothing to do with the officials. They come from the morning peak, a missing declaration or a passport without two free pages, and all three are easy to prevent.

Six points to settle before a Cape Town trip

From the airport to the Waterfront, the Winelands and the coast

The airport sits inland on the Cape Flats, so the city, the Atlantic beaches and most of the Winelands lie within about an hour. The times assume a driver waiting at the FBO and a journey outside the weekday morning and evening rush.

Most visitors are met by a chauffeur at the FBO, and hotels in Camps Bay, Constantia and the Winelands arrange their own cars. For a party that wants the view of Table Mountain from the air, the helicopter to the Waterfront is far quicker than the road and can be extended into a flight over Cape Point on the way.

Charges on a Cape Town trip

On top of the aircraft price, a Cape Town trip carries British duty on departure, South Africa's own passenger tax on the way home, the FBO's handling and ACSA's airport charges, and VAT on local services.

On the British side, duty is due only when a flight leaves the UK, and South Africa falls in Band C, the band for destinations whose capital lies more than 5,500 miles from London. A flight home from Cape Town carries none, and nor does a departure from Jersey or Guernsey. Every jet able to fly to the Cape without stopping weighs well over 20 tonnes and already pays the higher rate, so the extension of that rate to all private jets from 5.7 tonnes in April 2027 changes nothing here. From 1 April 2027 departures from Scottish airports pay Scotland's Air Departure Tax instead of APD, at the same rates and bands in its first year, and the Scottish Government plans a Private Jet Supplement from April 2028.

In South Africa, the air passenger tax is collected by the operator and paid to SARS, and the handling and landing fees depend on the aircraft's weight, the time of day and the services ordered. The consultant's quote shows each item, so the only extras to budget for are what you choose on the day, such as the helicopter or a longer stay for the jet.

Cape Winelands, George, Lanseria and the other airports

For a long range jet from Britain, Cape Town International is the only practical airport in the region, but a few others matter for the rest of the trip, and some that charter sites recommend are not suitable at all.

Routes between Cape Town, Britain and Ireland, and the direction they run empty

All prices are for the entire aircraft, whatever the number on board, and the flight times count only the hours in the air. At some 9,700 kilometres from London, Cape Town lies beyond the nonstop range of most business jets, so every route here uses a Bombardier Global 6000 or a Gulfstream G650, the G650 on the longest runs from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Newcastle and on a few southern routes as well. If your dates are fixed, set these figures beside the full charter prices shown near the top.

Sectors between Britain and Cape Town appear mostly from December to March, and those heading home to Britain are released more often than those going out, frequently only a few days before the flight.

Online calculator

If you want to see what your route would cost as a standard charter, so you have something to measure an empty leg against, use the calculator below. Fill in the airports, the dates and the number of passengers, add any preference on aircraft type, and we will send a written calculation by email or messenger. Please check your contact details carefully so that we can reply quickly.

The figure the calculator returns is an estimate for planning. The firm quote comes back from our consultants with the cost broken out line by line, and the price agreed there is the price written into the contract.

If you would rather skip the arithmetic, send us the route and the dates instead and a consultant will come back with both numbers, the charter price and any empty leg that fits.

Entering South Africa at Cape Town: passports, declarations and customs

South Africa lets British visitors in without a visa, but it has its own rules on passports, children and customs, and since July 2026 an online declaration for everyone who crosses the border.

• Passport. It must stay valid for at least 30 days after the day you leave South Africa and have at least two blank pages, and the rule applies to children's passports too. Some travel agencies abroad still quote six months of validity and three free pages; the official rule is the one above, but a spare page does no harm.
• Length of stay. British citizens may stay up to 90 days for tourism or business without a visa.
• Children. South Africa has special document requirements for travellers aged 17 and under, and GOV.UK refers parents to the Department of Home Affairs, so check what to carry, particularly if only one parent is travelling.
• Traveller Declaration. Since 1 July 2026 SARS requires an online declaration from every person entering or leaving the country, submitted in the SATMS app or on the SARS website no more than 24 hours before departure; a parent or guardian can submit it for a child.
• Customs. The duty free allowance per adult is 2 litres of wine, 1 litre of spirits, 200 cigarettes and 20 cigars, 250 grams of tobacco and other goods up to 5,000 rand; carrying more than 100,000 rand in cash, or the equivalent in foreign currency, needs Reserve Bank permission and a declaration.
• Health. A yellow fever certificate is needed only by travellers arriving from a country with a risk of the disease or after more than 12 hours in transit at an airport in one, so a short fuel stop does not count. Cape Town and the Western Cape are free of malaria, but the Kruger lowveld is not.
• Wine for home. Each adult may bring 18 litres of still wine into Britain, and from 1 October 2026 sparkling wine such as Cap Classique counts within the same 18 litres, alongside 42 litres of beer, 4 litres of spirits or 9 of fortified wine, 200 cigarettes and 270 GBP of other goods on a private flight, or 390 GBP by airline; many estates will ship anything more.

Empty leg calendar for Cape Town, month by month

Cape Town's year runs the other way from Britain's: a long, dry summer from November to March, a mild autumn, and a green, rainy winter from June to August.

Empty sectors to and from the Cape are most plentiful between December and March, when aircraft deliver families for the southern summer and fly back for them weeks later; from June to August they are rare.

Three situations in Cape Town, three answers

Taking a dog or a cat to Cape Town

South Africa is strict about arriving animals. A dog or cat needs a veterinary import permit from the Director of Animal Health, valid for six months, an ISO microchip and a health certificate completed by a vet in Britain and endorsed by an official vet within ten days of arrival. Dogs also need negative blood tests for several diseases, among them Babesia and Brucella, and treatment against internal and external parasites within 30 days of travel, and Cape Town International is one of the airports where pets may enter. Relocation specialists disagree on whether a rabies vaccination is compulsory for animals from Britain and on quarantine for dogs, so we ask for the permit conditions in writing before planning the flight.

The return journey is the longer job. South Africa is not on the list of countries approved by Great Britain, so a dog or cat coming home needs a rabies vaccination, then a blood test at least 30 days after it, and may land in Great Britain only three months after the sample was taken. Add a Great Britain health certificate, tapeworm treatment for dogs one to five days before arrival and an operator approved to fly pets into Great Britain. The three months run from the date of the sample, so a blood test done in Britain well before departure can remove the wait at the end of the trip.

Private flights to Cape Town: what clients ask

Call +44 7857 574938 , message the same number on WhatsApp , or write to flight@empty-leg.co.uk . Tell us the dates, how many are travelling, whether you are staying in the city, on the Atlantic coast or in the Winelands, and whether the trip continues to a safari or the Garden Route. Our reply lists every sector that fits and a price for a full charter, including the FBO, the slot and the paperwork for South Africa.