Helicopter from Miami to Inagua

Matthew Town lies about 461 nautical miles out of Miami, at the southern end of the Bahamas, and almost all of that is open water. A helicopter is not the fastest way to cover it, and on this route that is rarely what decides it.

What decides it is what the hour looks like: low over the water, unhurried, in a cabin that carries your party and nobody else. The time for your date comes back with the quote, because it depends on the aircraft, on the departure point and on the wind.

Miami's heliport sits about two miles from Downtown and four from Miami Beach, which for most parties is a short drive rather than a journey. Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach are also possible and have their own pages.

Tell us where your party is actually staying and the departure point is picked around that rather than the other way round. On a crossing of this length the departure point also decides how much daylight is left at the far end, which is why we ask for it at the enquiry rather than later.

That is settled with the operator when you book rather than promised on a web page. What can be done on the day depends on the permissions in place at the time and on the conditions.

What we hold is the flight and the arrangements around it, and both come back to you before anything is confirmed.

Yes, within daylight and within what the crew is allowed to fly. That is the main thing a charter buys you, and on a crossing of this length it matters more than on a short hop.

The birds are worth seeing in low light, and the hour you leave Miami is what decides whether you get that light or the middle of the day. The time is set when you confirm and can still be moved afterwards, because the aircraft is not going anywhere else and there are no other passengers to inconvenience.

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 Bahamas is a different country and a helicopter does not change that. We take the passport details once at the enquiry and file for both sides before departure, and clearance happens on the way in with the crew handling it. The travel documents page lists what each passenger hands over and by when.

About thirty minutes. There is no terminal hall to cross and no queue to join. You arrive, you walk out, and the outbound border filing is already done from our side before you get there, so there is nothing to hand in and nothing to print.

The colour of the water, the whole way. A helicopter crosses low enough that harbour green, the deep blue off the shelf and the pale banks and cuts of the chain are all legible rather than abstract.

From a jet at altitude that is a blue rectangle. On the last few miles the salt basins show up as flat white and pink panels behind the town, and for some parties that view is the reason the flight was booked at all.

One settlement and a great deal of nothing, which is the appeal. Matthew Town sits on the west shore with a masonry lighthouse of 113 feet on the point outside it, standing since 1870 and worked by hand for more than a century.

Behind the town lie roughly 300,000 acres of salt ponds, one of the largest solar salt operations in North America. Inland, Inagua National Park covers 287 square miles and holds the largest breeding colony of West Indian flamingos in the world. Everything a day here needs is arranged with the flight.

It is the reason most parties come. The Bahamas National Trust, which has managed the park since it was declared in 1965, counts around 70,000 flamingos on the inland lakes, and the bird is the national bird of the country.

Beyond them the tourism board counts some 140 species and calls the island the national birdwatching capital: the Bahama parrot, which lives on only two islands in the whole country, a hummingbird found nowhere else, plus herons, egrets, spoonbills and pelicans working the same shallow water.

Say at the enquiry that the park is the point and the hour of departure is planned around the light.

The oceanside flats and the interior creeks hold bonefish, and they run large by Bahamian standards because so few people ever cast at them. It is a wilderness rather than a lodge coast, so a guide is arranged in advance and rods travel within the payload for the aircraft on the day.

Union Creek, an enclosed tidal creek of close to 5,000 acres on the north west shore, is a reserve rather than a fishery: one of the longest running green turtle studies anywhere has run there since the 1970s, and access is through the Trust rather than on your own.

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.

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 guide, a warden or a table laid on the way over, 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.