Travelling to Saint Helena: a stay set by one weekly flight

Why a stay on Saint Helena lasts nine nights

Airlink, a South African carrier, is the one airline on the route. Its first scheduled flight from OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg landed on 14 October 2017, and the service is flown with an Embraer E190 that usually stops to refuel at Walvis Bay in Namibia on the leg towards the island, for a flight of four and a half to six hours. In October 2025 Airlink committed to an 18-month timetable of Saturday departures from Johannesburg, with Tuesday departures from Cape Town in the peak season. Before that, flights had alternated between the two cities and between Saturdays and Tuesdays, which the tourism strategy says made booking ahead harder.

The length of a stay follows from that week. A traveller connecting from Europe or Britain has to spend a night in Johannesburg on the way in and another on the way out, and the strategy reckons that these overnights stretch a one-week stay on the island into a trip of more than ten days. On the weekly cycle alone, before any travel to or from Europe, it puts the shortest possible trip at nine nights.

Visitors stay well past that floor. Non-Saint leisure travellers spent an average of 12.6 nights on the island in 2019 and 11.9 nights in 2025, and St Helenians coming home stay more than three weeks on average, by the statistics office figures that the strategy of December 2025 cites. Bookings are usually made more than a year ahead. The monthly Ascension flight changes the pattern one weekend in four. The aircraft flies on to Ascension on the Saturday and comes back on the Sunday, so the return to Johannesburg leaves on a Sunday, and for one night the arriving and departing passengers both need beds.

London paid for the air link. The contract to design and build the airport, worth £285.5 million, went to the South African firm Basil Read in 2011, and the National Audit Office reported in February 2025 that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was paying almost £3 million a year to cover the airport's shortfall in income. The politics article sets out the constitutional tie that puts Saint Helena's budget in London's hands.

How wind shear shapes the flights into Saint Helena

The runway is 1,950 metres of concrete on Prosperous Bay Plain, on the east side of the island, laid partly over the filled gorge of Dry Gut, which the geography article describes. The airfield stands about 300 metres above sea level among steep approaches and rocky outcrops, and turbulence comes down off the surrounding bluffs.

The trouble showed on 18 April 2016, when a Comair Boeing 737-800 testing the route without passengers abandoned its second approach close to the ground because of wind shear and met it again on the third, when it landed. Eight days later the government announced an indefinite delay. The National Audit Office puts the resulting delay to commercial flights at around 17 months, and the service that began in October 2017 used a smaller aircraft whose 99 seats could at first be filled only to 76; refuelling at Walvis Bay, a shorter leg than the earlier stop at Windhoek, raised the limit to 98 from April 2019. The southbound approach is the one wind shear affects. The northbound approach is generally less turbulent but suits only lighter aircraft, and the government classes the airport as Category C because of the island's isolation and the potential for wind shear.

No airfield lies close enough to divert to. Every aircraft needs the range to fly back to the African mainland, whose nearest airport is almost 2,500 kilometres away, and the government gives the nearest alternative runway as 800 miles off. Once an inbound aircraft has passed the halfway point from Africa, about an hour and a half out, no other aircraft may set off towards the island, which caps the airport at two landings and two departures a day. The strategy counts the weather delays year by year.

The strategy gives 13% as the average delay rate from 2017 to 2024, while the National Audit Office, reporting in February 2025, gave 11%. When weather keeps an aircraft from landing or leaving, the lack of an alternative runway can stretch the disruption to between 24 and 72 hours, and the flights planned for 14 July 2018 were held back a full week. Several agents and tour operators named the delays of 2024 among their reasons for ceasing to sell the island, according to the strategy. In February 2026 the airport shut to all traffic for a different reason, a downgrade over the readiness of its fire tenders, and scheduled services returned on 15 February 2026.

What visitors show on arrival at Saint Helena

Every visitor needs an entry permit, British citizens included, and the British government's travel advice notes that the island's own authorities set and enforce the entry rules. A short-term permit covers up to 183 days and is applied for on arrival. The conditions are a return ticket or the money to buy one, accommodation booked in advance, enough funds for the stay and medical insurance of at least £175,000 covering emergency treatment and evacuation by air. The fee is paid in cash in pounds, US dollars, euros or rand, or with the Bank of St Helena's Tourist Card, and children under 12 are exempt.

St Helena Tourism wants the return ticket printed and the proof of insurance in English, and warns that a phone will most likely find no WiFi or mobile data on landing, so an electronic certificate has to be downloaded before the flight. The two sets of advice measure passport validity from different days. The British government asks for six months beyond the date of arrival, the tourism office's checklist six months beyond departure. Some nationalities need an e-visa approved by St Helena Immigration before travel, and the strategy describes most as needing none.

Saints coming home face a check of their own. A returning St Helenian may be asked for a declaration, a certificate or a letter from the immigration office confirming St Helenian status, and a passport giving Saint Helena as the place of birth is not enough on its own; without the evidence a traveller may be refused boarding. The politics article follows the islanders' British citizenship from the British Nationality Act 1981 to its restoration in 2002.

Travel through South Africa adds the SARS online traveller declaration, completed within 24 hours of travel. St Helena Tourism's advice, as read in October 2026, lists biosecurity measures and goods barred from entry, introduced after an escalation of foot and mouth disease outbreaks in South Africa. The British government warns of strict rules on importing alcohol, and drinking in public is banned in the Jamestown area.

How visitors pay and get around on Saint Helena

Why visitors land with cash in hand

Saint Helena has had its own currency since 1976, the Saint Helena pound, which is at parity with sterling and is also the currency of Ascension. Sterling notes are taken at most places, with change given in local pounds, and new polymer notes of £5, £10 and £20 went into circulation in January 2026 beside the old ones, which stay legal tender.

There are no ATMs on the island. The Bank of St Helena, set up in 2004, exchanges foreign currency and advances cash against a card, but it is shut from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning, and the weekly flight lands on a Saturday. St Helena Tourism therefore advises arriving with sterling for the entry fee and enough cash to last until the bank opens. International card payments are not yet widely accepted, in the tourism office's words, and the bank offers visitors a virtual prepaid Tourist Card, paid contactlessly from a smartphone wherever the St Helena Pay Service is used.

How visitors get from the airport to Jamestown

Taxis are not usually at the airport unless booked, so the tourism office advises arranging the transfer before arrival. One road from the airport is the 14-kilometre haul road built to Rupert's Bay to carry materials for the works, paved and opened to public traffic in 2019. A minibus service runs on a timetable that includes the airport, with most routes heading into Jamestown, and hire cars run short enough between November and April that the tourism office recommends booking one ahead.

Traffic keeps to the left, with an island-wide limit of 30 mph. Most roads are a single lane, with hairpin bends and little parking in Jamestown, and the island has three roundabouts. A British photocard licence is valid for three months, after which a driver needs a local licence from the Post Office in Jamestown.

Why rooms run short between January and March

Which months bring the visitors

Arrivals are back at their level before the pandemic. The government counted 5,008 arrivals in the financial year 2024/25, 99% of the 5,091 of 2018/19, after border closures that the strategy dates from March 2020 to October 2022. Most arrivals are not holidaymakers. Pure leisure arrivals, which leave out people visiting friends and relatives, numbered 1,238 in 2019/20 and 1,057 in 2024/25, and the National Audit Office counted 2,112 visitors in 2023, around a quarter of the 8,000 targeted for that year. Counted by nationality in a separate table, which it marks as incomplete, the strategy's leisure arrivals for 2024/25 include 872 St Helenians, 278 from the United Kingdom and 152 from the Americas, up from 105 the year before, which the strategy links to new direct flights from the United States into South Africa.

The calendar is lopsided. In 2024/25 the monthly count ran from 196 in June to 756 in January. December to March is the peak, and the strategy puts the peak season's share at 55% of annual arrivals, which it wants cut to 45% by 2031. People visiting friends and relatives fly in during December and out in January, and they are less likely to use serviced rooms, so hotels can sit emptier than the flights suggest.

Jamestown, on the dry leeward north coast, runs from 21 to 28 °C between January and April and from 17 to 24 °C for the rest of the year, and the centre of the island averages 5 to 6 °C cooler. Jamestown gets very little rain, while the high ground and the south coast take 750 to 1,000 mm a year. For the flights the hard season is the southern autumn and winter, with low cloud and storms. The island keeps Greenwich Mean Time all year, so while Britain is on summer time, from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, it runs an hour behind London.

Where visitors sleep on Saint Helena

From mid-January to March, with the best weather and the whale sharks offshore, the serviced rooms often reach capacity. An audit in October 2025 found about 65 of them in hotels and bed and breakfasts, 60 en suite and 30 at the Mantis, a hotel opened in 2017 in officers' barracks built in 1774, and repeat dive groups take a share of them in the peak. Beds in fully serviced hotels and guest houses fell by around 14% between the start of commercial flights in 2017 and the strategy of December 2025, and The Consulate and Town House have closed. Self-catering houses move between short lets and longer rentals to contract workers and residents. Proof of a booking is a condition of entry, and by 2031 the strategy wants 90 registered and graded serviced rooms.

How ships put their passengers ashore at Jamestown

Before the airport every tourist came by sea, on the RMS St Helena, on a yacht or on an occasional cruise liner. The mail ship took five days from Cape Town and sailed once every three weeks. She anchored off James Bay about 30 times a year, and passengers and freight went ashore in small boats, so visitors in those years were mostly dedicated hikers and retirees with the days to spare. Her final departure from the island was set for 4pm on Saturday 10 February 2018, at the end of 268 voyages, with a 27-foot paying-off pennant marking her 27 years of service. A cargo ship from Cape Town now calls about once a month and unloads at the island's only wharf, at Rupert's Bay, built for the airport works.

Cruise ships call from October to April, using the island as a midway port between Cape Town or Walvis Bay, the Falkland Islands, South America and the Caribbean. Landing their passengers is the difficulty. There is no sheltered quay, so passengers go ashore by tender to the Steps at Jamestown, a landing the strategy calls physically demanding even in good conditions and uncertain in variable weather, and the sea is roughest in summer, at the height of the cruise season. Without new landing infrastructure, large ships cannot guarantee that passengers will get ashore, and their lines cannot list the island as a confirmed stop. The strategy aims at expedition vessels, which carry at most 250 passengers and tend to stay several nights; a conventional ship carries 700 to 4,000 and seldom spends more than 12 hours in one place.

Yachts are the steadier trade. The strategy counts 826 yacht arrivals in 2024/25, against 722 in 2018/19, and estimates that yachts bring in about £250,000 a year; the Governor's Cup, a race from Cape Town held every two years in December and January, dates from 1996. The 23 moorings laid below Ladder Hill Fort in 2012 were closed on 5 January 2024, after an inspection found the ground chain badly worn, and were due to be lifted in December 2025 to open the area for anchoring. Insurers generally require a yacht at anchor to stay crewed, which leaves crews less time ashore.

What visitors come to Saint Helena to do

Which walks and sites draw visitors inland

The Post Box Walks, 25 by the strategy's count in December 2025, each end at a box holding a signature book and a stamp, and they run from 1.5 to 12 kilometres; the culture article tells how the collection grew. The strategy records every hiking trail on the island as accredited to the Green Flag Eco Trails standard and twelve walking guides as trained to it. Two hikes in Peaks National Park that it calls among the most popular were temporarily closed while it was being written. Diana's Peak, at 818 metres, became the island's first national park in 1996, and five of the 23 National Conservation Areas are set aside for the wirebird, the island's last endemic land bird, of which a census in 2022 counted 602.

Longwood House, where Napoleon lived from December 1815 to his death on 5 May 1821, and the Valley of the Tomb have been French property since 1858, run by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and open to the public. The tomb is a large white stone with no inscription, inside railings topped with spearheads. Leisure arrivals from France numbered 82 in 2024/25, and the strategy puts French interest down to Napoleon. About 8,000 Liberated Africans are thought to lie in unmarked graves in Rupert's Valley, and No. 1 Building, put up in 1865 and the only structure left of the depot that received them, is to become an interpretation centre, with work hoped to start in autumn 2026; the history article tells how they came to the island.

When the whale sharks gather off the island

Whale sharks come to Saint Helena from about January to April, males and females in equal numbers, which St Helena Tourism takes as a sign that they come to mate. Swimming with them runs under fixed rules. Snorkelling is allowed and diving is not, no more than 8 snorkellers may be in the water at once and two boats near the sharks, swimmers keep 3 metres from the body and 4 metres from the tail and flash photography is banned underwater. Touching or riding one is an offence under the Environmental Protection Ordinance. After one of the island's two dive operators closed in June 2025, one was left.

The waters form a Marine Protected Area run to the sustainable-use principles of IUCN Category VI, which the government describes as nearly the size of France. Eight shipwrecks are open to snorkellers and divers, among them an RFA tanker sunk by a German U-boat in the Second World War and a fishing vessel sunk on purpose to make an artificial reef.

How Ascension and Tristan are reached from Saint Helena

Saint Helena shares a governor and a constitution with Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, and each island sets its own terms of entry. Airlink's monthly charter carries on from Saint Helena to Ascension, turns round there overnight and comes back. The Ascension Island Government takes the bookings, and a visitor needs an Ascension visa, good for one entry and up to three months, and medical insurance covering evacuation to at least £500,000.

Tristan da Cunha can be reached only by boat. Fishing and supply vessels sail from Cape Town eight times a year and a South African research vessel calls once, in September or October. The voyage takes up to a week, longer in bad weather, and ships anchor offshore and land passengers by small boat. A visit needs the Island Council's permission, camping is illegal and a guide is required to climb Queen Mary's Peak, which at 2,062 metres is the highest point listed in the record for Saint Helena.