A Flying Rally Across Africa, From Crete To Cape Town

Along The Route

• Crete, Greece
• Cairo & Khartoum
• Ethiopia
• Nairobi, Kenya
• Kilimanjaro & Serengeti
• Zanzibar
• Victoria Falls & Bulawayo
• Botswana
• Cape Town, South Africa

The Vintage Air Rally was a flying rally across Africa that traced the footsteps of the pioneering pilots of the 1920s. Vintage aeroplanes, accompanied by supporting aircraft and helicopters, departed the island of Crete in Greece and made their way toward Cape Town in South Africa, following air routes that had once been blazed by early aviators. The journey recreated the spirit of the era's great exploratory flights, linking the birthplace of European aviation with the continent those pilots first approached by air.

Fifteen vintage aeroplanes built before the end of 1939 took part, each one a reminder of an age when aircraft were open to the sky, fragile machines of wood and fabric flown by determined crews. Alongside them came a supporting contingent of aircraft and helicopters, providing logistics, camera platforms and crew rotation. Together the fleet formed a travelling village, moving from island to island, desert to highlands, and finally across the plains toward the southern tip of Africa.

The route unfolded like a story in chapters. After the departure ceremony in London, crews gathered in Crete before a small gathering of Canadian biplane enthusiasts joined the adventure. The formation crossed the Mediterranean, pausing over the Nile and its neighbouring cities, then climbed into the Ethiopian highlands and down onto the Serengeti plains, where wildlife and weathered light shaped the atmosphere as much as the machines themselves.

Among the destinations were Cairo, Khartoum, Nairobi and the shadow of Kilimanjaro, along with island ports of the Indian Ocean such as Zanzibar. Each stop offered a brief pause — an evening on the ground, a walk beneath acacia trees, a conversation with local pilots and enthusiasts. The rally moved at the pace of an expedition rather than a race, allowing crews to enjoy the cultures, vineyards and landscapes that lay between the departure point and Cape Town.

The event carried an official character, recognised by the Royal Aero Club of the United Kingdom and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. That institutional framing lent weight to the undertaking, presenting it as more than a publicity stunt: it was a careful re-enactment of historic flight lines, supported by aviation authorities and heritage organisations on several continents, and documented for future audiences through images, press material and a blog of the crews' daily progress.

Charities rode along with the rally. BirdLife International and Unicef were among the organisations associated with the event, giving the expedition a purpose beyond spectacle. Flying over remote regions on scheduled paths brought attention to conservation work and to communities far from major cities. The crews saw the continent not as a distance to be conquered but as a living landscape of wetlands, plains and coastlines that deserved attention and support.

Departure day arrived in mid-November, with the rally leaving Crete for the long run south, arriving at Cape Town several weeks later. Scheduled over roughly five weeks, the total duration of the crossing allowed for weather, maintenance and the unexpected detours that shape any overland flight of this kind. A slipstream of aircraft stretched across the sky, and the fanzone, contest, merchandise and press sections of the event's own coverage kept the public following along.

For the crews, the experience was one of continuity and discovery. Many had spent years restoring, maintaining and flying these machines, and the rally gave them a reason to fly them meaningfully rather than ceremonially. Watching a vintage aeroplane cross the same ground as a 1920s pioneer, or pass over a stretch of coastline once surveyed by early flight, produced an evocative moment that no display could reproduce. The aircraft were flown, not merely polished.

Those who could not travel with the rally followed by other means, reading accounts sent from the crews, browsing galleries of photographs and watching the fleet's progress unfold step by step. Newsletter coverage and updates from the route carried the story outward, allowing enthusiasts, historians and the merely curious to share in the journey. In that sense the rally was two expeditions at once: one across Africa, and one reaching everyone who had ever looked up and wondered.

What remains from an event like this is a sense of route rather than a result. The rally did not set out to break records or to prove a machine superior to another; it aimed to follow a path, to honour a line of early flight, and to show how closely an aircraft of wood, wire and fabric can still speak to the landscape. Over weeks of flying, the crews and their supporters built a shared memory that outlasted the crossing, and a reminder that some journeys are valued for the ground they cover.