Seaplane from Miami to Florida Keys

The first island on the highway is also the shortest hop from the city. Key Largo lies about 50 statute miles from downtown Miami in a straight line, which is roughly sixteen minutes in the air.

It carries John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. The park was dedicated in 1963 as the first undersea park in the United States and the water it protects runs straight into the national marine sanctuary offshore.

Two more of the chain sit at this end. Tavernier is the southern end of Key Largo, between Key Largo proper and Islamorada. It keeps a small historic centre from the years of the railroad.

Ocean Reef is the private club community at the top of the chain in North Key Largo, with its own marina and its own private airfield. Access there is for members and their guests.

This is the part of the Keys that works as a half day out of Miami. The flight is short enough that a morning on the reef and an evening back in the city fit inside the same daylight window, which is why the Upper Keys are the most asked for end of the chain.

The same leg runs as a seaplane charter from Miami to Key Largo when the day is only about this island.

Islamorada is not one island either. Its official name is Islamorada, Village of Islands, because the village takes in six of them: Plantation Key, Windley Key, Upper Matecumbe Key, Lower Matecumbe Key, Indian Key and Lignumvitae Key. It is about 65 statute miles from downtown Miami, so a little over twenty minutes in the air.

It calls itself the Sport Fishing Capital of the World and the water on either side is the reason rather than the slogan.

The shallow backcountry of Florida Bay lies behind the islands and the drop into blue water lies in front of them, both minutes from the same dock. That is why flats fishing and a fishing day by seaplane are the two things parties add most often here.

There is no airport in Islamorada at all, so every arrival on wheels ends with a car on US 1. The water landing puts the party in the middle of the village instead. The dedicated route page is the seaplane charter from Miami to Islamorada.

Marathon sits at the hinge of the chain, at the north end of the Seven Mile Bridge, about 90 statute miles from Miami and roughly half an hour in the air. It also holds Florida Keys Marathon International, one of only two public airports Monroe County owns for the entire chain.

That makes the Middle Keys the one stretch where a runway aircraft and a float aircraft are both real options, so this is the part of the chain where we most often recommend a small plane instead, usually when the party is large or the baggage is.

Duck Key lies just east of it, a small island of canals and arched bridges that is a resort island rather than a town.

Everything around both of them is water. The Seven Mile Bridge is the piece of the Overseas Highway everybody photographs and it is actually 6.79 miles long. From the air it is the clearest marker of how far down the chain you are. The route page for this stop is the seaplane charter from Miami to Marathon.

Under the old bridge there is an island the highway has no exit for. Pigeon Key is five acres of sand and coral rock in the water beneath the Old Seven Mile Bridge, off Marathon, with no road onto it and no room for an airstrip.

Driving down the chain puts you in Marathon and not on it, which is the whole reason a water landing at the foot of the bridge is worth anything here.

The Lower Keys are where the chain stops being a line. Big Pine Key is the largest island of this stretch and holds National Key Deer Refuge, established in 1957, which spans 84,351 acres across 25 islands and protects a deer that lives nowhere else in the world.

Sugarloaf Key is the backcountry water between Big Pine and Key West, flats on the bay side and open ocean to the south. It is the last quiet stretch before the end of the road and it is the part of the Keys where the highway matters least, because the useful water is behind the islands rather than beside the road.

This is also where a float aircraft stops being a convenience. The islands here are residential and green rather than resort, the docks are small and the water is shallow, so what the aircraft buys is arriving at the water you actually came for. A sandbar picnic on the bay side is the usual afternoon.

Little Palm Island lies off Little Torch Key in the Lower Keys and no road reaches it. It is accessible only by boat or by air, which is the one case on this chain where the aircraft is not the faster option but the option.

It is about 109 statute miles from downtown Miami, so a little over half an hour in the air. The arrival is a water landing followed by a short transfer rather than a drive and a wait. Parties that come here are usually here for the island itself rather than for the Keys around it.

The same set-down works for a boat instead of a dock, which is what a yacht transfer is: the floats put the party alongside rather than at a pier. The route page for this one is the seaplane charter from Miami to Little Palm Island.

Key West is the end of the road: mile marker zero, the southernmost city in the continental United States and about 90 miles north of Cuba. It is 129 statute miles from downtown Miami, which is about forty two minutes in the air against roughly 159 miles of driving.

It is the one town in the chain with scheduled airline service and the busier of the county's two public airports, so it is also the place where a party can start or finish the Keys leg on wheels and do the rest on floats. Most Keys itineraries either begin or end here.

It is the jumping off point for everything further west as well, which is the next tab. A day that ends here is often a Key West escape rather than a transfer. The flight down the chain is half of what people remember about it. Offshore the reef starts before the town ends.

Sand Key is a bar of sand, a reef and a 132 foot iron lighthouse standing in open water about six nautical miles south west of the harbour, between Sand Key Channel and Rock Key Channel.

It is one of the seventeen Sanctuary Preservation Areas in the Keys and covers 286 acres. The only way to spend a day on it is to arrive on the water.

The chain does not end at Key West. It carries on west for almost seventy miles as sand keys and shoals to Dry Tortugas National Park, where Fort Jefferson stands in open water on Garden Key.

The National Park Service states that there are no roads to the park and that the ways in are by boat or by seaplane, which makes it the clearest case in Florida for arriving on floats.

From downtown Miami it is about 185 statute miles, so roughly an hour in the air. Then the last stretch of it is open water with nothing on either side.

What a charter may do inside park water depends on the permission the operator holds. That is the part most pages skip. It is confirmed for your party and your date before anything is booked. The detail sits on the Dry Tortugas page and the leg itself on the seaplane charter from Miami to Dry Tortugas.