Helicopter from Miami to Big Major Cay

The cay sits around 225 nautical miles from the city, roughly 259 statute, and almost all of that is open water. A helicopter is not the fastest way to cover it, and that is rarely what decides the booking.

What decides it is what the hour looks like: low over the banks, unhurried, in a cabin that carries your party and nobody else. The block time comes with the quote, because it depends on the aircraft, the departure point and where the clearance stop falls.

In the Exuma Cays, in the central Bahamas, a little over a mile from Staniel Cay and about 83 miles southeast of Nassau.

It is one of the 365 islands that make up the Exumas and it is uninhabited, so there is no settlement on it, no road, no airstrip and no pier. From Miami it is roughly 259 statute miles across open water, which is why almost everybody arrives by air rather than by boat.

Sand, scrub, three freshwater springs and the pigs. No hotels, no shops and nobody living there, which is the whole character of the place: you arrive, you spend the hours you booked and you leave nothing behind.

That emptiness is also why the arrangements matter more here than they would somewhere with a marina, because everything the day needs travels with you or is held on the cay next door.

Nobody can prove it. The story told most often is that sailors put them ashore meaning to come back for them and never did, and other accounts have them swimming from a wreck or being left there by people on the next cay.

The honest answer is that no single documented account exists, which has not stopped them becoming the most photographed animals in the Bahamas.

That is settled with the operator when you book rather than promised on a web page. Permissions out here depend on the day, the site and who holds it, so the honest answer before an enquiry is that we arrange the arrival with the flight and confirm it before anything is paid.

What we can say in advance is the part that never changes: your party clears at a port of entry on the way in, and both filings are ours.

Yes, within daylight and within what the crew is allowed to fly. That is the main thing a charter buys you on this route.

The hour is set when you confirm and can still be moved afterwards if your day changes, because the aircraft is not going anywhere else and there are no other passengers to inconvenience. On a cay with no shade and no shelter, moving the hour is worth more than it sounds.

No. A charter carries the people you name and nobody else. There is no seat assignment, no other party sharing the cabin, and no risk of the flight leaving without part of your group. The passenger list can also change up to shortly before the flight: a name added or dropped is a refiling on our side rather than a rebooking on yours.

Yes, for every passenger including children. The Exumas are in the Bahamas, so this is an international flight and a helicopter does not change that. We take the passport details once at the enquiry and file for both sides before departure. The travel documents page lists what each passenger hands over and by when.

An aircraft may enter the Bahamas only at a designated port of entry, and there is none in the Exuma Cays: not on the cay itself and not on the island a mile north.

So the aircraft clears somewhere that has one, which is a real leg of the route rather than a formality on arrival. Andros carries three ports of entry and is the common answer on this heading. None of the paperwork is yours: we make both filings and arrange the clearance.

The colour of the water, the whole way. A helicopter crosses low enough that the shelf off Florida, the deep blue beyond it and the pale banks and sandbars on the Bahamian side are all legible rather than abstract.

From a jet at altitude that is a blue rectangle. This is the part parties describe afterwards, and for some of them it is the reason the flight was booked at all.

Yes, and most parties do. Out early, back before dark, with the aircraft held for your party rather than turning around, so the hours you booked in the Exumas are the hours you get.

The clearance stop is planned into the morning and both borders are filed in advance from our side. It makes for a long day rather than a short one, which is worth knowing when there are small children in the party.

The day moves. Weather is the one thing a charter does not make flexible, and we would rather move a flight than fly it badly.

You are told as early as we know, and the aircraft is rebooked to a date that works for your party. Because it was held for you and nobody else, moving it is a conversation rather than a queue for the next available seat.

It depends on the aircraft and on what the party is carrying, which is why the answer comes with the quote rather than before it.

Send the headcount and the bags at the enquiry and you get back what is free on your date, what each one takes and what each one costs. You are pricing the airframe rather than a headcount, so the cost per person falls as the group grows.

Send the date, the number of guests, where you are leaving from and the hour you would like. You get back what is free, what it costs, the boarding time and what is included, and nothing is held until you say so.

If the day has anything else in it, a boat for the morning or a table booked for the afternoon, say so at the same time and it comes back priced alongside the aircraft.

Yes, pets travel in the cabin with you. The one thing we ask is that you tell us at the enquiry, with the type of animal and its weight, so the seating and the load plan are right from the start.