The Charter
Private Plane Miami to Cay Sal
A charter is not a ticket. You are not buying a seat next to strangers, you are booking the aircraft. On most routes that is a matter of comfort. On this one it is the difference between going and not going, because nothing scheduled goes anywhere near the bank.
The Cay Sal Bank sits on its own, roughly 31 miles off the Cuban coast and 62 miles below Key Largo, with about 75 miles of open water between it and the next Bahamian land.
Ninety six little islands share 5.74 square miles of ground on a bank of some 2,018 square miles. There is no town on any of them, no ferry to any of them, and nobody there expecting you.
Everything between the two ends is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, both border filings and the travel documents the Bahamas wants before you leave Florida. Your party brings passports and a bag. The route, the clearance stop and the hour of the return are decisions, and they are yours to make rather than a schedule to work around.
It is 143 miles of water from the city and one of several small plane routes from Miami. The same aircraft also flies the rest of the Bahamas.
Plan Your Cay Sal Charter
How It Works
How a Private Plane to Cay Sal from Miami Actually Works
Six things change the moment the aircraft belongs to one party for a day on the bank, and none of them are about the aircraft itself.
Plan Your Cay Sal CharterThe Manifest
The list of who flies to Cay Sal is written by you and closed by you
A charter carries the people you name and nobody else. There is no seat map to be assigned around and no stranger in the row behind.
On a run this far out that matters more than it sounds: a party going to the bank is usually going for one reason, a dive week, a crew joining a boat, four people who want a beach with nobody on it.
The list can still change up to the day before, a name added or a name dropped. We refile and the flight is the same flight.
The Clock
The departure time for Cay Sal is a decision rather than a listing
Nothing scheduled flies to the bank, so there is no timetable to be late for and none to be early for either. A charter leaves when you want it to, inside daylight and inside what the crew is legally allowed to fly.
That is the only reason a day out to Cay Sal works at all, because the hour out and the hour back have to fit around the water not around a published departure.
The Terminal
You walk out of a private terminal on the way to Cay Sal, not through an airport
The Florida end of this route is general aviation. You park, walk to the aircraft and go, with the outbound filing already done from the departure point.
The Bahamian end is a border desk at whichever port of entry the day is built around, and it is a walk of a few steps rather than a terminal to cross. Nothing your party carries goes further than the door of the aircraft.
The Route
Where a private plane goes on the way to Cay Sal is part of the booking
The bank has no desk of its own, so a Bahamas day out here always has two legs: a clearance stop first, then the run south. Which stop is an open question at the enquiry rather than a fixed leg on a timetable, and the answer changes what the morning looks like. Tell us what the day is for and the routing comes back built around it.
The Weather
Weather is the one thing a Cay Sal charter does not make more flexible
Everything else on this page bends. Weather does not, and it counts twice this far out because the last part of the day happens on open water. We would rather move a date than fly it badly.
You hear from us as early as we know, and because the aircraft was held for your party and nobody else, moving it is a conversation and not a queue for the next available seat.
After You Land
What happens at the far end of a Cay Sal day is arranged before you leave Florida
A boat standing by, a picnic set on a beach, a tender out from a yacht at anchor: on a bank with nothing on it, whatever is waiting is waiting because it was booked with the flight.
Tell us what the day is meant to look like when you send the dates and it comes back arranged, with ground transport at the Florida end and anything else you asked for priced alongside the aircraft.
Departure Points
Departure Points for a Private Plane Charter from Miami to Cay Sal
The aircraft is booked for your party alone, so the departure point is yours to pick rather than something a timetable decides. These are the four we fly from around Miami. Select one to see exactly where it sits.
Miami Executive
Miami Executive Airport, TMB, Kendall
Kendall-Tamiami in the south west of the county, a general aviation field where the distance from the car to the aircraft is measured in steps. Nobody is waiting on a boarding call, because the only people on the flight are the ones who booked it. It is the shortest drive from the south and west of Miami-Dade.
Opa-locka Executive
Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport, OPF
The executive airport north west of the city, where your group waits in a private terminal and walks out when it is ready. Most island days leave from here, and the same building clears the return into the United States. There is no check-in queue, so the morning is built around your day.
Miami International
Miami International Airport, MIA
A pickup rather than a base, for a party already off an airline flight that wants the island leg from the same airport. Arranged per flight and confirmed with the operator before it is quoted. It is the one departure point that costs you time, because a commercial field runs to its own order.
Fort Lauderdale Executive
Fort Lauderdale Executive, FXE
Fort Lauderdale Executive, chosen when the group is north of Miami and the drive south would eat the hour the flight saves. The return clears in its own building there, so a day need not end where it began. The aircraft positions to meet you.
How to Charter
How to Book Before Flying Private Plane from Miami to Cay Sal
Chartering an aircraft is not booking a seat. There are four steps, and only the first one is yours.
Plan Your Cay Sal Charter- 01
Contact Us
Write to us on WhatsApp or by email. Send your dates, how many guests, where you are coming from and what the day on the bank is for. Tell us the hour you would like to leave. Diving, a beach, a boat waiting: it changes the routing more here than on any other crossing we fly, so say it early rather than late.
- 02
Get Aircraft and Prices Back
We check what is free on your date and send the aircraft that fit your party. Seats, baggage and flight time for each one, and the way the two legs are put together. You are pricing the whole airframe rather than a headcount, so a smaller group on the same aircraft costs the same as a full one.
- 03
Confirm and Pay
You pick the aircraft, and we set the pickup point, the clearance stop and where the day finishes. Then everything around the flight. Catering on board, a boat standing by, ground transport at the Florida end. Flowers if the day is a special one. You approve it, you pay, and your boarding time, departure point and everything included come back to you.
- 04
Just Arrive 30 Minutes Before Departure
You will have no terminal and no queue. Just make sure you are there 30 minutes before. Then you take off, and the rest of the day runs the way you asked for it.
On the Bank
Where a Private Plane Charter to Cay Sal from Miami Puts You Down
Nothing scheduled reaches the Cay Sal Bank, so there is no arrival hall at the end of this flight and no return departure to work back from. What a private charter puts down instead is a set of decisions, and all of them belong to your party.
These are the ones that come up on this route, in the order parties actually raise them.
Plan Your Cay Sal CharterWhere a Cay Sal Charter Clears In
Your Choice of Desk
A Bahamas day has to make its first landing at a port of entry, and the bank does not carry one. The Bahamian customs authority lists four airfields in this district: South Bimini Airport, Cat Cay, Chubb Cay and Great Harbour Cay. On a scheduled journey that would be handed to you. On a charter it is a question at the booking, and the answer shapes the morning.
The nearest desk is not automatically the right one: a party that wants lunch ashore picks differently from a group that wants to be over water by nine, and a late return home can make one field easier than another. We put the options in front of you with the quote rather than picking for you.
Why the Cay Sal Leg Finishes on Water
No Open Strip
This is the plainest thing on the page. Cay Sal has an airstrip on the map, cut during the Second World War, and it has been abandoned for decades along with the island around it. Nothing on wheels uses it.
So a private plane does the crossing and lands where you chose, and the last part of a day actually spent on the bank happens on floats. That is a seaplane to Cay Sal, a different aircraft on its own page, and it is the aircraft to ask about if setting foot on the bank is the whole point.
Plenty of parties still charter the private plane for this run: a boat is meeting them, the bank is one stop in a longer week, or the day is built around the water rather than the sand. Tell us which it is and the routing follows.
Which Cay Sal Island the Day Is Built Around
Ninety Six to Pick From
The bank is not one island. It is roughly 2,018 square miles of shallow water carrying 96 cays and about 5.74 square miles of dry ground between them, in named groups: the Elbow Cays and Double Headed Shot Cays at the top, Water Cays and Dog Rocks along the north, Damas Cays, Muertos Cays and Deadman Cays around the middle, the Anguilla Cays down the southeastern edge, and Cay Sal itself in the south.
Naming one of them at the enquiry is worth doing. It changes the track, the fuel plan and where a boat should be waiting, and it is the kind of detail that is easy on a charter and impossible on anything else. What there is to see once you are out there belongs on the Cay Sal destination page rather than here.
Crossing to Cay Sal on Your Own Track
143 Miles of Water
From Miami the bank lies 143 statute miles out, which is 124 nautical, and the aircraft is over open water for almost all of it. There is no island chain to follow and nothing underneath but the Straits. Because the aircraft is yours, the line it flies is not fixed the way a scheduled track would be.
Routing over the reef line, a pass along the northern edge of the bank on the way in, a detour to look at something on the way home: all of that is a request at the booking rather than a favour asked in the air. Say what you want to see and it is planned in, weather and airspace allowing.
Holding the Aircraft While Cay Sal Runs Long
Nobody Waiting
The aircraft that brought you does not leave. It waits where it landed until your party is ready, because it has nowhere else to be that day and nobody else booked on it. That is what makes a day out to the bank a day at all rather than an overnight.
A dive that runs two tanks longer, a boat that comes back late, an afternoon that turns out to be worth staying for: none of them cost you anything but daylight. The one hard edge is crew duty and the sun going down, and we tell you where that edge sits when the hours are set.
What Rides in the Back to Cay Sal
Weighed, Not Counted
When the aircraft carries one party, what goes in the back is a conversation about weight rather than a rule about bag counts. On a run to the bank that is not a small thing, because most people coming here bring something with them.
Tanks and regulators, rods, a cooler for the boat, a case of water for a beach with no shade on it: all of it travels, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. Because nobody else is on board, the trade is between your own passengers and your own load, and you decide where it falls. The baggage guidance sets out how that works.
Anything larger than luggage is a different service on the same aircraft, and that is island logistics rather than a charter with extra bags.
Adding a Second Island to the Cay Sal Day
One Charter, Two Stops
The bank is often part of a trip rather than the whole of it, and clearing in is what makes that simple: once your party is through the desk, every leg after it is domestic. An aircraft that belongs to you for the day can string those legs together in any order.
Bimini, Andros, Nassau and Staniel Cay and the Exumas all take the same type, and none of them require going back to a hub first. That is the shape of an island hopping day or a longer Bahamas day; a single run out and back is a Cay Sal getaway day trip. The full list is on the Bahamas destinations page.
When the Cay Sal Forecast Says No
The Day Moves
Weather decides more out here than it does on a short hop, because the far end of the day is open water with no harbour behind it. A front that would be an inconvenience on a coastal flight is a reason to move a date on this one. What a charter changes is what happens next.
Nobody is queuing for the next available seat, so a moved day is a conversation about which other date works for your party. We watch it from the week before and tell you as early as we know, and if the morning looks marginal we say so rather than getting airborne and turning back.
Ready When You Are
Ready to Book a Private Plane Charter to Cay Sal from Miami?
Send the date and the number of guests. You get the aircraft that are free, what each one costs and the hour it can leave, and nothing is held until you say so.
Add-Ons
Private Plane to Cay Sal Add-Ons
Tell us which of these you want when you send your dates and they come back priced with the aircraft.
In Detail
Private Plane Charter Miami to Cay Sal: The Crossing, the Clearance and the Water at the End
Everything above is the day. What follows is the detail behind it: who is on board, who does the paperwork, which airstrip the aircraft uses and why the last part of a Cay Sal day happens on water rather than on wheels, on what is the most remote flight to the Bahamas we fly.
Private Plane Miami to Cay Sal: Flying Low Over the Reef and the Flats
Room enough and a window each on a Cay Sal private plane
The crossing is not dead time between two airports. The cabin is yours for it, so what is below is part of the day rather than something to sit through. It sits roughly 143 statute miles from downtown Miami, just over 124 nautical and the flight is about three quarters of an hour in the air. Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and the Keys have their own pages: Cay Sal from Fort Lauderdale, from West Palm Beach and from the Florida Keys, which is the shortest water crossing of the four. Everything between the two ends is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, both border filings and the travel documents the Bahamas wants before you leave Florida. Because the aircraft is yours, the field it leaves from is a choice and not a given. The cabin belongs to your party and nobody else, so the crossing is yours to spend as you like. what travels with you is arranged before you board.
Private Plane to Cay Sal from Miami: You Decide the Departure Time
Your hour, your names and a private plane to Cay Sal
Nobody hands you a timetable on a charter. The day is built around the hour you name. You name the hour you want to lift off, the hour you want to be standing on Cay Sal and which water in the city suits your morning. The aircraft belongs to your party for the day, so all three are your decision rather than a departure somebody else set, and a change the week before is a message to us. Half an hour before the lift-off is the whole of the check-in. Your party walks from the car to the aircraft, the bags go on in front of you, and the list for that flight carries your names and nobody else's. Nothing about the morning waits on a stranger. Everything between the two ends is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, both border filings and the travel documents the Bahamas wants before you leave Florida. And the crossing is a reason in itself. The windows are deep and the aircraft crosses low, so there is room for everybody to sit and watch the water change instead of taking turns at one of them.
Private Plane Charter from Miami to Cay Sal: The Crew Files Both Borders, You Carry a Passport
Passports are all your party carries on a Cay Sal crossing
A private plane from Miami to Cay Sal crosses an international border twice in a day. It is the part that goes wrong when nobody files it in advance. Entry into the Bahamas asks for a declaration filed from Florida, clearance at a port of entry on arrival and a US return filed before you leave, which is what sets where you may land coming home. On a Crown Air charter the crew files all three. Passports for everyone, children included, per the travel documents guidance. What may travel sits in the baggage guidance. That same filing sets where you land coming home: a return from the islands clears at None, so a day that began on the water finishes on a ramp and a departure moved by weather runs under the weather and delays policy. If the party changes before the flight, the crew refiles. A name added, a name dropped: that is a message to us rather than a problem for you.
Flying Private Plane from Miami to Cay Sal: Milestone Days and Bahamas Weekends
A day trip, a weekend or something to celebrate on Cay Sal
A private private plane from Miami to Cay Sal is booked when the day is worth marking: a birthday, a proposal, a graduation, a weekend away with the people who matter. The flight is short enough that the occasion, not the travelling, is what the day is about. That is what a private plane from Miami to Cay Sal is for. We hold the aircraft, the hour and the extras you asked for, and what happens once you are out there is yours to arrange. A proposal on a beach with no other footprints on it, which on ninety six uninhabited cays is not a promise that needs stretching. Some parties fly over for the day and are home the same evening. Others stay on and book the return for the day they want. Both are the same charter, and the whole group travels together on one booking. If there is something to celebrate, say so when you book: catering, a private chef, premium beverages and flowers travel with you. Everything is in place before you board in Miami.
Questions
Private Plane Miami to Cay Sal: Questions Answered
What does chartering a private plane to Cay Sal actually include?
The aircraft and the crew for your party, both border filings, the clearance stop on the way in and whatever you have asked us to arrange at the far end.
You are booking the airframe rather than seats on it, so the price covers the flight whether four people travel or eight. Catering, a boat standing by and ground transport at the Florida end are added when you ask for them and come back priced with the aircraft.
Can we choose our own departure time?
Yes, within daylight and within what the crew is allowed to fly. That is the main thing a charter buys you, and on this route it is worth more than on most, because nothing scheduled goes near the bank and there is no published hour to work backwards from.
Most parties want to be off the ground early, when the water is at its flattest, and come home in the afternoon. The hour is set when you confirm and can still move afterwards if the day changes, because the aircraft is not going anywhere else.
Is anyone else on the private plane?
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. It also means the passenger list can change up to shortly before departure: a name added or dropped is a refiling on our side rather than a rebooking on yours.
Can a private plane land on Cay Sal itself?
No. There is an old airstrip on the island from the Second World War, but it was abandoned long ago and no wheeled aircraft uses it. The island has been uninhabited for decades.
A private plane takes your party across and lands at the field you chose in the Bahamas; reaching the bank itself means setting down on the water, and that is a seaplane rather than this aircraft. If landing on the bank is the point of the day, the seaplane page is the one you want.
Where does a Cay Sal charter clear customs?
At a Bahamian port of entry on the way in, because the bank has none of its own. In this district that means South Bimini Airport, Cat Cay, Chubb Cay or Great Harbour Cay, and which one suits your day is settled at the booking rather than left to the morning.
The crew handles the desk and the paperwork. From your side it is one short stop before the leg you actually wanted.
Do I need a passport for Cay Sal?
Yes, for every passenger including children. The Bahamas is a different country and a private aircraft does not change that. We take the passport details once at the enquiry and file for both sides before departure. The travel documents page lists what each passenger hands over and by when.
How early do we need to be at the airport?
About thirty minutes. There is no terminal to cross and no queue to join at the Florida end, because it is general aviation. You park, walk to the aircraft and go. The outbound border filing is already done from our side before you arrive, so there is nothing to hand in and nothing to print.
Can we change the passenger list after booking?
Yes, up to the day before in most cases. A name added or dropped means we refile the manifest, and the flight is otherwise unchanged. Tell us as early as you can, because the paperwork is what needs the notice, not the aircraft.
Can we add another island to the same day?
Often yes. Once your party is cleared in, every leg after it is domestic, and an aircraft that belongs to you for the day can string those legs together in any order. Bimini, Andros, the Berry Islands and the Exumas all take the same type. Send the whole itinerary at the enquiry and it comes back as one day rather than as separate flights.
What if the weather turns on the day?
The day moves. Weather is the one thing a charter does not make flexible, and it counts twice out here because the far end of the day is on open water. We would rather move a date 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.
Does a charter to Cay Sal work out cheaper for a group?
There is nothing scheduled to compare it against on this route, so the honest answer is that the aircraft costs what it costs whether it is full or not, and the cost per person falls as the party grows.
A group of six or eight is where it starts to read very differently from a group of two. Send the date and the headcount and you get real numbers rather than an estimate.
How do we start?
Send the date, the number of guests, where you are leaving from and what the day on the bank is for. You get back the aircraft that are free, what each one costs, the boarding time and what is included, and nothing is held until you say so.
If the day has a boat in it or a picnic on a beach, say so at the same time and it comes back priced alongside the aircraft.
Can I bring a pet on a private plane charter?
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.
Next Step
Ready to Book a Private Plane to Cay Sal from Miami?
Send the date, the number of guests and the hour you would like to leave. You get the aircraft that are free, what each one costs and what is included, before anything is booked.
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