Helicopter from Miami to West Palm Beach

The city and the island are two different places with a bridge between them, and from the air the difference is obvious before anybody explains it. One side is a working downtown. The other is low, green and expensive, with the ocean on its far edge. Worth Avenue is four blocks of it, running from the lagoon across to the sea, with the vias opening off it into courtyards that most people walk past. Via Mizner, cut through by Addison Mizner in 1923, is the best known. Whitehall stands at the north end, the house Henry Flagler finished in 1902 and the reason the railway came this far south at all. It is a museum now and it is the one building here worth an hour. Parties who want a table rather than a walk book a fly and dine day, and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

The Lake Worth Lagoon runs about twenty miles between the mainland and the barrier island and opens to the Atlantic at the Palm Beach Inlet. On the way in it is the last thing under the window and the easiest way to see how the county is put together. Peanut Island sits in the middle of that opening: 79 acres of spoil left over from cutting the inlet in 1918, with a swimming beach and a snorkel lagoon on the sheltered side. Under the trees is the fallout shelter the Navy built for President Kennedy, a buried hut behind a short tunnel, either the oddest thing in the county or the only thing worth walking to. Boats anchor off the sand bar on the south side at the weekend. That is where a beach picnic goes and where water toys earn their place, or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you at the marina.

The mainland side is a working town rather than a resort strip, which is why a day here can hold a meeting in the morning and a long table in the evening without either feeling out of place. Clematis Street runs five blocks inland from Flagler Drive, with Rosemary Square at the far end of it. Flagler Drive itself follows the lagoon for the whole length of the city, so the water stays in sight from most of the downtown, and the Norton Museum of Art sits a short ride south of the centre. Ground is the part worth arranging in advance rather than on arrival. A car waiting or a meet and greet turns a set-down into an arrival, and catering on board covers the leg itself.

The best known piece of water in the county is not offshore. It is the shallow ground under the Blue Heron Bridge at Phil Foster Park, at the north end of the lagoon, and it passes under the window on the way in. More than 300 species have been recorded there, most of it in a few feet of water, which is why divers with a lifetime of reef behind them keep coming back to a snorkel trail beside a road bridge. The catch is the tide. It is worth doing within about an hour either side of high water and close to unusable outside that window. On a day trip that is a real constraint rather than a detail, because high water falls about fifty minutes later each day and will not negotiate with your boarding time. Say if the party wants it and the departure is built around the water instead.

Manatees do not tolerate cold water. When the lagoon drops below about 68 degrees they crowd into the warm outflow of the power station on the Riviera Beach side, sometimes in the hundreds. The viewing centre on North Flagler Drive is built for exactly that and it is free. The season runs from the middle of November to the end of March, and the animals turn up on the cold days rather than the pretty ones, which is the opposite of how most people plan a Florida trip. It is a short ride from the middle of town and it pairs with the bridge at the other end of the same lagoon, so a winter morning can honestly hold both.

The continental shelf is narrower off Palm Beach County than anywhere else on the North American coast, so the Gulf Stream runs closer to the mainland here than it does north or south of it. From the air the colour change sits a surprisingly short way off the beach. That is why the diving along this stretch is drift diving: you go in, the current carries you down the reef line and the boat follows the bubbles. It is also why the fishing grounds are a short run out rather than an hour, so a half day on the water fits either side of the flight. Parties book flats and offshore access with the dates rather than after them. Rods and gear travel, within what the aircraft takes on the day.

Sixteen miles inland at Wellington the winter equestrian season runs about thirteen weeks, from the turn of the year to the end of March, and it fills the county's hotels for the whole of it. The boat show lands at the end of the same window, in late March, on Flagler Drive in the middle of town. Those are the weeks when the road up from Miami is at its worst, which is also when an hour in the air is worth the most it is ever worth on this route. They are also the weeks when the aircraft has to be held early rather than asked for late. A milestone or a proposal planned inside that window is worth naming when you send the date.

The Lake Trail is a paved path along the lagoon shore, about five and a half miles of it, and it is the best thing on the island that costs nothing. It starts at Lakeside Park by the town docks, runs north behind the houses and past the Flagler Museum, and finishes just beyond the Sailfish Club at the top of the island. The water is on your left the entire way and the city on the mainland is on the far side of it. Bicycles are hired on the island rather than carried on the aircraft. Most parties ride it one way and take a car back, which is worth arranging before you arrive rather than at the top of the trail.

A helicopter charter Miami to West Palm Beach also works as the first leg. From this end the water crossings are shorter than from Miami, so the same party can carry on east to Harbour Island and the rest of the Bahamas or south to Key West. That turns one coastal hop into island hopping or a wider day in the islands. A second leg over the Gulf Stream is a different day, so it is named when the date is sent. If a yacht is meeting you, that is a yacht transfer, on this coast the reason many of these flights happen. How the two meet is settled with the operator when you book. The full city guide is on the West Palm Beach destination page, the packaged version is the West Palm Beach getaway day trip and the flights that start there, not end there, are on the helicopter charter from West Palm Beach page.