I made use of Get Jet this week – the new online service that lists and lets you book affordable ’empty leg’ private jets legs around South Africa and beyond. This is what happened.

So as not to leave confusion lingering as you read my tale, this is, briefly, how Get Jet is able to offer flights at up to 75% off the normal price.

When a private jet takes a client from say Cape Town to Johannesburg, it still has to get back to Cape Town. So it flies back to Cape town empty. This is called an ‘empty leg.’ Because the dates of these empty legs are not flexible, they are made available to you at a fraction of the normal charter rate (up to 75% off).

So for example, you could find a flight that suits your schedule from Johannesburg to Cape Town for R29,500. And that could be in a jet with 6 seats. So if you book for 6 people, it will cost R4,916 a person. Or perhaps you want the whole jet to yourself?

Check out their flight listings here.

Get Jet are connected to numerous charter companies and the flight I booked for me and BPG (it’s not ‘I’ in this case, for the fools who masquerade as ‘grammar nazis’) was handled by Proflight – a charter company based in Cape Town. The sexy number we would be flying in, was a Beechcraft Premier 1.

Here are some stats on the Premier 1.

According to Get Jet:

The Beechcraft Premier I is a light jet aircraft manufactured by the Beechcraft division of Hawker Beechcraft. The Premier I is constructed with a high-strength composite, carbon fiber/epoxy honeycomb fuselage. The Premier I and IA can be certified as light aircraft for operation by a single pilot. The powerplants are Williams International FJ44-2A engines..

The Premier I has a roomy cabin for a light jet aircraft: 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m) long by 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) wide by 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) tall, with a folding table, four club-type seats, two forward-facing seats and a partitioned aft toilet.

For a light jet, she’s pretty roomy – as BPG demonstrates..

I’m completing my PPL soon at CTFTC so I was pretty stoked to sit in the cockpit for the trip to Johannesburg. Light jets like these are single-pilot machines and very popular amongst owner-pilots. Definitely something to aim towards.

We arrived at the jet at 09h50 and took-off at 10h00. We landed at 11h35 and as we taxied down the runway at Lanseria I loaded up Uber on my iPhone and there was an UberBlack waiting for us as we got out the jet (they’re always around Lanseria – bless them).

25 minutes later we were checking in at the Maslow hotel in Sandton. That’s two hours after we arrived at the jet in Cape Town.

That same exercise would usually cost you four to five hours, flying commercial.

Think about that for a second.

Not that we had to think about it – we lived it. On the way back to Cape Town we flew commercial (God forbid) and as we stood in the queue to board we did the sums and realised that if we had gone back on a private jet, we would be at home already. Not just landed – inside our actual homes.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT GET JET – They have regular flights between Johannesburg and Cape Town.

• There was one from JHB to CPT today, for R28k for 8 people.
• And I see there’s another one from CPT to THB on Monday 8th December. Also R28k for 8 people

Can’t wait for them to launch their app – which will notify you when a desired empty leg is added to the system. In the meantime, be sure to sign-up to their weekly listings list – to get all the empty legs delivered to your inbox. CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP.