Helicopter from Miami to Florida Keys

The chain starts where the mainland lets go. Key Largo carries mile marker 106, the highest number on the road, and it is the part of the Keys most people reach first and least often see properly, because it is also the part the drive uses up getting going. Ocean Reef sits at the very north end behind its own gate, a private community with its own harbour. Everything at this end of the chain is about the water on the Atlantic side: this is where the reef comes closest to the road, and where most diving in the Keys is done. For a party whose day is only about the top of the chain, the helicopter run to Key Largo has the detail. From the air it is the first twenty minutes of a longer run rather than a destination of its own.

Islamorada is a string of smaller islands in the eighties on the mile marker scale, and it is the part of the chain built around boats. Houses here come with their own dock and a skiff tied to it, which tells you most of what the place is for. The draw is the water on the gulf side rather than the ocean side. Behind the islands the sea goes shallow and pale for miles, and those backcountry flats are what parties come for: a skiff, a guide and a morning standing up looking for fish. If that is the day, the flats fishing page sets out how it is arranged. From the air the flats are the reason to fly this stretch low. The whole pattern of channels and banks behind the chain is only legible from above, and it is the single thing parties photograph most on the way down. The Islamorada page covers a day spent here alone.

Marathon sits at mile marker fifty, halfway down, and it is where the chain does its most famous thing. The Seven Mile Bridge runs out of the western end of it across open water, the longest of the forty two bridges on the road, with the old railway bridge standing beside it. This is the middle of the Keys in every sense. It is far enough down that the drive has become a commitment and close enough that a day here is easy by air, which is why it is the stop that changes most when you fly. Parties who want the bridge photograph want this stretch. Marathon is also the jumping off point for the quieter islands south of it, and the Marathon page has what a day based here looks like.

Little Palm Island is an island off the Lower Keys with no road to it. The only ways on are by water or by air, which is what keeps it as quiet as it is: there is no passing traffic because there is nowhere to pass through to. That is the clearest case on the whole chain for this aircraft. Everything that makes the island what it is also makes it awkward to reach, and the part of the journey that usually eats the afternoon is the part a helicopter removes. How the last leg works depends on the day and on what is permitted at the time, so it is settled with the operator when you book. The Little Palm Island page has the rest.

Key West is where the numbers run out. It is a small island at the end of a hundred and thirteen miles of bridges, and almost everything visitors come for sits in the old half of it within a walk of the harbour. That compactness is why a single day here works by air and does not by road. Driving, the round trip is most of two days with an evening in between. Flying, the afternoon is the point and the hours on either side of it are not spent in a car. It is the busiest stop on the chain and the one most parties name first. The Key West page covers a day there on its own terms.

The chain does not quite end at Key West. The Dry Tortugas lie about seventy miles further west, a national park of small islands around Fort Jefferson, a hexagonal brick fort ringed by reef and open sand. There is no road to it, no bridge and no town. That is the whole appeal and also the reason most people who visit the Keys never see it: getting there and back is the day, unless the journey itself is quick. It is the longest run on this page and needs planning rather than a decision on the morning. The Dry Tortugas page sets out what is and is not possible out there.

What goes in the back is weighed with the party rather than counted against a rule. Rods, a cooler, dive gear, a dress that cannot be folded: tell us at the enquiry and it is worked into the payload for the aircraft on the day. The baggage guidance sets out how that works. A car at the Miami end to bring your party to the aircraft, and a car or a cart at the other end on the islands where that is how people get about: both are ground transport and both are booked with the flight rather than found on arrival. If a yacht is meeting you somewhere along the chain, that is a yacht transfer and it is arranged alongside the flight. Anything heavier than luggage is a different service altogether, and that is island logistics.

Because the aircraft is held for your party, the day does not have to end at one stop. Lunch at one end of the chain and the afternoon at another is a normal shape for this route, and it is the shape that is impossible by road inside a day. If the flight is the point rather than any one island, that is a scenic flight, and if the day is about moving between several, it is island hopping. Both are planned the same way and priced with the aircraft. The full guide to the chain sits on the Florida Keys destination page, the packaged version is the Florida Keys day trip and every stop we arrange to is listed on the helicopter charter hub for the Keys.