Private Jet from Miami to West Palm Beach

The island of Palm Beach lies directly across the lagoon from downtown, a short drive over one of the bridges, and many parties who fly into the city spend part of the day on the other side. From the downtown waterfront the island is in plain view, close enough that lunch there and a meeting back in town fit into the same afternoon. Worth Avenue runs four blocks from the lagoon to the ocean, with the courtyard vias tucked behind its shopfronts. At the north end of the island stands Whitehall, which Henry Flagler finished in 1902 and which is now the Flagler Museum. The island has its own page on this silo, a private jet to Palm Beach, and the Palm Beach destination guide covers the rest. For a long lunch there, book a fly and dine day.

The Lake Worth Lagoon stretches about twenty miles between the mainland and the barrier island and reaches the Atlantic at the Palm Beach Inlet, just north of downtown. In the mouth of that inlet sits Peanut Island, 79 acres built from the sand dredged out when the inlet was cut in 1918. It has a swimming beach and a sheltered snorkel lagoon, and under the trees a fallout shelter prepared for President Kennedy in 1961. It is the easiest half day on the water to add to a working trip, because it starts so close to the centre of town. Boats gather off its sandbar at weekends. That is the place for a beach picnic or water toys, and a dock pickup brings a boat to meet you in town.

Downtown West Palm Beach is a working city centre rather than a resort, which is why a day here can hold a meeting and a long dinner without either feeling out of place. Clematis Street is its main street, running five blocks back from Flagler Drive on the water to Rosemary Avenue. A few blocks south lies Rosemary Square, once called CityPlace, with the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts on its western side. The Norton Museum of Art, founded in 1941 and holding more than 8,200 works, sits a short drive south of the centre. A car for the day or a meet and greet links it all together. Evenings here tend to start on Clematis Street and finish at the Kravis Center or back by the water, which is why the flight home is so often set late.

The best known dive site in the county lies in a few feet of water under the Blue Heron Bridge, at Phil Foster Park at the northern end of the lagoon. More than 300 species have been recorded there, from the shallows beside a road bridge, and experienced divers come back to it again and again. It works within about an hour either side of high tide and hardly at all outside that window. High water moves about fifty minutes later each day, so a party that wants the bridge should say so when booking. The departure is then set around the tide rather than the other way round.

When the lagoon cools below about 68 degrees, manatees gather in the warm water flowing out of the power station on the Riviera Beach side, at times in large numbers. A free viewing centre on North Flagler Drive is set up for exactly this. The season runs from 15 November to 31 March, and the colder the day, the more animals there are to see. Nothing about it needs booking, which makes it the simplest thing to add to a morning in town. It is a short drive north of downtown, and together with the bridge at the same end of the lagoon it makes an easy winter morning before the flight home.

The continental shelf off Palm Beach County is narrower than anywhere else along the North American coast, so the Gulf Stream passes closer to land here than at any other point. For divers that means drift dives, carried along the reef by the current with the boat following. For anglers it means deep water a short run from the inlet, so half a day on the water fits around the flights. Book flats and offshore access together with the dates. Rods and tackle travel within what the aircraft carries on the day.

The jet lands at Palm Beach International, the county's main airport, which lies just west of the city. Private aircraft use their own terminals on the general aviation side, apart from the airline concourses. For your party that means a few steps from the aircraft to a car and a short drive into downtown, with no bridge and no water in between. The car is booked with the flight and is waiting where the aircraft stops, so the first appointment of the day is where it was planned to be. The same car can stay with your party all day and bring everyone back to the aircraft for the return.

Sixteen miles inland, Wellington's winter equestrian season lasts about thirteen weeks, from early January to the end of March, and fills hotels across the county. The boat show lands on Flagler Drive at the end of the same window. Those are the weeks when I-95 is at its slowest and the aircraft needs booking early. A proposal, a milestone or a wedding in that window gets the return set to suit. The West Palm Beach destination guide covers the city, the packaged version is the West Palm Beach getaway day trip, and flights that start here rather than end here are on the jet charter from West Palm Beach page.