A Cape Town helicopter proposal: the two flights with champagne, and how to plan the rest

The Twelve Apostles flight, $172, twelve minutes. Straight down the Atlantic seaboard from the Waterfront to the buttresses above Camps Bay and back, with a glass on the pad when you land. It is rated 4.9, the highest score on this site, though on twelve reviews rather than thousands. Short, scenic and the least expensive way to have the occasion built into the booking rather than improvised.

The Table Mountain circle, $352, twenty-four minutes. A complete loop of the massif — the front face, the back slope, the dams on top, the Constantia valley — and champagne afterwards. Twice the flying, and the only flight here that shows you the mountain from every side. Rated 5.0, from two reviews, so treat the score as thin.

If neither length suits, the third route is to book any of the private-capable flights and arrange the rest yourself. A private twelve-minute city flight at $187 costs less than either champagne listing and gives you the cabin to yourselves, which for a proposal usually matters more than the glass does.

In the air is harder than it sounds. Everybody is harnessed into a seat, wearing a headset, in a noisy cabin, often with strangers on a shared flight. Getting a ring out of a pocket while strapped in is genuinely awkward, and if you drop it in the cabin it is gone until the aircraft is stripped. Pilots are used to this and some will help; ask first, in the booking notes, and take their advice.

On the pad is the usual answer, and it works. You land, the rotors wind down, you step out onto the apron with the harbour and the mountain behind you, and there is a glass of champagne waiting. Ground crews at a heliport that flies proposals every week know exactly what to do with a nod, and they will keep the other passengers back for a minute.

Tell them twice. Once in the booking notes when you pay, and again quietly at check-in. The booking note is what gets the champagne to the right pad; the word at check-in is what gets the crew watching for your cue.

Photographs. Ask the ground crew rather than a stranger. They stand in the right place, they know where the sun is, and they have done it before. Your own phone in their hands produces better pictures than a professional you have flown in and have to schedule around.

A twelve-minute flight is a ninety-minute visit, and if you have proposed on the apron at nine in the morning you have the entire day in front of you. Three plans that work, in ascending order of effort.

Stay at the Waterfront. Breakfast at one of the harbour restaurants, the aquarium, or the Zeitz museum in the old grain silo at the end of the basin. Nothing needs booking and nothing needs a car, which after an early start is worth more than it sounds.

Go up the mountain. The cable car is twenty minutes away by road and the queue is shortest early. Having just seen the mountain from above, walking out along the plateau is an unusually good second act — and the photographs from up there are the ones you will actually print.

Drive the coast you have just flown. Victoria Road to Camps Bay, on to Hout Bay, and over Chapman’s Peak if it is open. You will recognise every bay from the air, and lunch in Hout Bay or Noordhoek finishes the morning properly.