Tokyo private tour: all eight flights, and what they are not

The phrase does a lot of work in Japan and it does not always mean the same thing. On the ground it usually means a guide and a vehicle for your group for a half or full day. In the air, which is all this site sells, it means the aircraft is booked out to one party: you are not placed next to strangers, and the fare on the listing is the fare for the whole machine.

That is the single most useful thing to carry into the comparison below. A Tokyo private tour at $413 is not a per-person price that doubles for two people. It is the booking. Two passengers or four, the number on the card is what leaves your account, which changes the arithmetic completely depending on how many of you are travelling.

• Eight listings, every one of them sold as a private booking.
• Fares run from $413 to $5,702, for the aircraft.
• Flight lengths run from ten minutes to ninety.

If what you want is the best Tokyo private tour with transport — a car, a driver and a guide for a whole day on the ground — that is a different product, and none of the eight listings here is one. We would rather say so on the first screen than sell you a flight and let you discover it at the helipad. The same goes for a Tokyo customized private tour, in the sense of picking your own stops: the route is set by the listing you choose, not written around you.

What is left, once that is out of the way, is a genuinely unusual situation. On most of our sites a shared seat sits beside a private upgrade and the comparison is about who you fly with. Here there is nothing to compare on that axis, because the answer is the same eight times over. So this page compares the only things that do differ: how long you are up, what the route takes in, whether a car comes to your hotel, and what the evidence behind each listing actually amounts to.

Start with the cheapest, because it is also the one most people are looking for. The sixty-minute flight at $413 is described by its listing as a private helicopter booking over Tokyo that takes in both the Skytree tower and Tokyo Tower, and it carries 24 reviews at 4.9. It is the lowest fare on the whole site and the longest flight available under $855.

Next by evidence rather than by price: the flight with a choice of 10, 20 or 30 minutes at $570, passing the Skytree tower, Shibuya, Shinjuku and Tokyo Bay. With 27 reviews at 5.0 it has more feedback behind it than any other listing here, which on a site holding 56 reviews in total is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up.

• $413 — 60 minutes, both towers, 24 reviews at 4.9.
• $570 — 10, 20 or 30 minutes, 27 reviews at 5.0.
• $855 — 10 minutes, pick-up, drop-off and a meal.

The ten-minute flight at $855 includes pick-up, drop-off and a meal in the booking, and has one review at 5.0 — one review, which is a fact rather than a rating. The thirty-minute flight at $2,851 is the one written around a group: room for up to five passengers in a single booking, with two reviews at 5.0.

Then the three listings with no reviews yet. A 50-minute night flight over Tokyo Bay, listed at 80 minutes door to door, at $792. A thirty-minute ride over the city sights and the Skytree tower at $1,267, with pickup available. And the ninety-minute ride pairing the Tokyo skyline with Mt. Fuji at $5,702, which is the highest fare on the site. New listings carry no stars here and are not ranked above the ones that do.

The eighth is the flight out to Mt. Fuji and back at $2,661, with a choice of lengths from thirty-five minutes to an hour and a half. It has two reviews. Two is not a rating in either direction, so the table below prints the number and leaves the judgement to you.

Three questions decide this, and none of them is about who else is in the cabin, because the answer there never changes.

How long do you want to be up? Ten minutes is a lap, not a tour, and the listing prices it accordingly once the pick-up, the drop-off and the meal are in the booking. Thirty minutes is the middle of this market. Sixty minutes at $413 is the outlier, because it is both the longest flight under $855 and the cheapest listing on the site.

How many of you are flying? This is where a per-aircraft fare stops being a detail. The thirty-minute listing at $2,851 is written around five passengers in one booking, and that is the comparison to make if you are a family of five rather than a couple.

• Ten minutes — one part of the city from above.
• Thirty minutes — a route rather than a landmark.
• Sixty or ninety minutes — the two longest listings here.

What evidence do you want behind the booking? Here the answer is thin and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Fifty-six reviews across eight listings, the largest single pile being 27, and three listings with nothing at all. There is no single best private tour in Tokyo to be read out of numbers that small.

The verdict. If you want the most flight for the least money, the hour at $413 is the straightforward answer, and 24 reviews at 4.9 is the second largest body of feedback here. If you would rather follow the listing other people have actually used, the 10-to-30-minute flight at $570 is our top pick: 27 reviews at 5.0, and a choice of lengths so you can buy ten minutes or thirty against the same route. Both are a Tokyo private tour in the only sense this site uses the word.

Two of the eight are built around a particular time of day rather than a particular route. The night flight over Tokyo Bay is the obvious one: a 50-minute night flight, listed at 80 minutes door to door, at $792. Everything else is flown in daylight hours as the operator schedules it.

Beyond that, the honest advice is about your own diary rather than the sky. Helicopters do not fly in every condition, and a booking held on your last morning in the city is a booking with nowhere to move to. Put a private tour Tokyo Japan visitors usually treat as the highlight of the week somewhere in the middle of the stay, not at the end of it, and you keep the option of a second attempt.

The other timing question is length, and it is worth answering before you look at fares. Ten minutes is enough to see one part of the city from above. Thirty minutes takes in a route rather than a landmark. Sixty and ninety minutes are what the two longest listings sell, and the longer of those is the only one that pairs the city with the mountain.