For the past 20 years, Air Journey has been offering trips to exotic destinations all around the globe. After forays to Africa in 2011 and 2014 we came back to a very exciting Africa Journey in 2019, and now we are planning an Africa Discovery in 2020.
By opening the world to the owner-pilot, we are always looking for new and exciting places to visit while keeping off the beaten path, away from busy places overwhelmed with mass tourism. With so many destinations becoming more and more accessible to general aviation, a lot of research goes into finding the right locations with the most desirable hotel accommodations, out-of-the-ordinary sightseeing, top highlights, state-of-the-art transportation, exquisite restaurants, the very best local guides, and so much more.
Our adventures are designed with a minimum of three nights at each destination, no departure before 9:00 a.m. and no overnight flights. We take advantage of the best weather in that part of the world, at any given time.
So, what goes into making the 2020 Journey to Africa happen? Like many other journeys, it starts with travel news and hotel research while staying on top of new resort openings and destination highlights.
Once we decide on which destinations we will fly to, we create what I call a distance chart. We basically put these different places in a certain order and compute the distance from one airport to the other. This gives us a better picture of how the program will materialize and how the journey will progress. We try to have an average distance of about 750 nautical miles per flying day, but we are not against a technical stop in order to expand that journey. The maximum acceptable is no more than 1,500 nautical miles on a flying day.
When the distance chart is done, we have a skeleton itinerary created with the number of nights at each stop, the highlights to be visited, etc. Then we start to look at a budget.
The budget starts with the costs of accommodations as well as what is included at each of these stops along the way. In Africa it’s going to be the cost of the different camps and additional private transfers, including by helicopter or airplane. If we experience Victoria Falls in Zambia, 
for example, we are going to include the cost of visiting the Devil’s Pool on top of the falls.
We are also going to be adding a dinner train excursion across the Zambezi River. We also plan to visit the mountain gorillas of Rwanda in their natural habitat at Volcanoes National Park (where we went for the first time in 2019). In Ethiopia we are going to be expanding our program to add a stop in the Omo Valley to meet the traditional tribes that live there. We are also researching the idea of stopping at the big island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean and visiting Nosy Be Island, etc.
After the budget has been established, we create a detailed day-by-day itinerary. When the final itinerary is approved, we include the details on our website, www.airjourney.com, highlighting the hotels where we will be staying, maps of the route, and additional details needed to get started.
We are already working on changes for the 2020 Journey to Africa. The program continues to evolve. Among some of the changes to be made are possibly adding a stop in Cairo to visit the vast Egyptian Museum, and Giza with its iconic pyramids and Great Sphinx. In Botswana, we are looking into visiting the Okavango Delta with a stay at one of the new Sanctuary Resorts overlooking the Okavango floodplains. And for Namibia we’ll be returning to the desert instead of the coast as we have recently been doing. We are considering going to Kulala Desert Lodge there.
Our journeys are limited to six to eight airplanes. This is mostly because of the parking situation, overflight permits, and separation in flight, especially in Africa.
For more information on the 2020 Journey to Africa and other guided and concierge trips, see www.airjourney.com.
