Private Jet 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 stretch most people reach first and see least of, because by car it is the part the day 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 is about the water on the Atlantic side: the reef comes closest to the road here, and most of the diving in the Keys is done off it. A day up here is flown into Marathon and driven back north, with the car booked alongside the flight. Ocean Reef keeps a private field behind its own gate, and whether it is open to your flight is settled with the operator rather than promised here. If the top of the chain is the whole point, the helicopter run down the Keys gets closer to it.

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. A boat booked out of here leaves on its own hour, and that is the argument for the aircraft on this stretch. Marathon is the field we fly into for it, so the flight is built backwards from the guide's hour rather than from a departure somebody else set.

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. It is also one of the two public fields in the chain that takes a jet. Florida Keys Marathon International is the short way in for anything between Islamorada and the Lower Keys, and for parties whose day is about the middle of the chain it is the field we fly to. From here the highway goes both ways and the water goes south. The Marathon page has what a day based here looks like, and the island west of it has a jet route of its own, Miami to Big Pine Key.

Little Palm Island lies 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 chain for taking the road out of the day altogether. Everything that makes the island what it is also makes it awkward to reach, and the four hours of highway are the part the aircraft removes. The jet lands at Marathon and the last stretch is by water, arranged with the flight rather than found on arrival. How that runs depends on the day and on what the resort has on, so it is settled 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. Key West International closes the road two miles east of the old town, which is the other field in the chain that takes a jet and the shortest ground leg on the whole route. Door to old town is minutes rather than an afternoon. 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 evening is the point and the hours on either side of it are not spent in a car.

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. A jet does not land out there, and nothing does except by water or on floats. What it does is take the four hours of highway out of the front of the day, so the hours that are left are spent on the crossing west rather than on US-1. It is the longest plan on this page and it is built with the flight, not decided on the morning.

What goes in the hold 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 at the other end for the run along the highway: both are ground transport and both are booked with the flight rather than found on arrival. If a yacht is meeting you somewhere in 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 field. Lunch at one end of the chain and the evening at the other is a normal shape for this route, and it is the shape that is impossible by road inside a day. If the day is about moving between islands rather than about one of them, that is island hopping, and a run out and back for the sake of the water below is a scenic flight. 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 a jet reaches is listed on the jet charter hub for the Keys.