Private Plane Charter Miami to Florida Keys

The upper end of the islands begins where the mainland stops, and it is the one stretch where flying is a judgement call rather than an obvious win. On a clear Tuesday the drive is manageable. On a Friday in season, with one lane each way and a bridge for every gap, it is the afternoon.

A charter answers that by landing at the top rather than at the bottom. Ocean Reef keeps its own field behind the gate at the north end of Key Largo, which is private ground and not ours to promise: if that is where you are going, we say at the enquiry whether the day works or whether the nearest public field and a short car ride is the honest answer.

This is the part of the chain where we are most likely to tell you to drive, and we would rather say it before you book than after. The whole Key Largo run has its own page with the detail on it.

Halfway between the mainland and the middle of the chain, Islamorada is where most of the offshore boats work out of, and a charter party going there is almost always on somebody's schedule but their own: a captain who wants lines in the water at first light, a guide who booked the flat for a tide that does not wait.

That is exactly the case a fixed departure ruins. Leaving Miami at an hour an airline chose puts you at the dock after the tide has turned. Leaving at the hour you chose puts you there before it. Because the aircraft is held for your party, the morning is built around the water not around a boarding gate.

The nearest fields sit either side of it, and which one we use depends on where the boat is. Tell us the marina and we work it out from there.

The field in the middle of the chain carries charter traffic and private aircraft and no scheduled service at all. That single fact is the clearest argument on this page: if you want to arrive at Marathon by air, a charter is not the comfortable option, it is the only one.

What that means in practice is that the middle of the Keys stops being the awkward part of the map. On a schedule you fly to one end and drive back up or down to it, which is an hour each way that nobody counts when they book.

Landing in the middle removes both of them, and it removes them from the start of the day as well as the end.

The full Marathon run is on its own page. From here it is one line on a map you get to draw.

The numbers on the green signs along the highway count down to zero in Key West, and everything about the far end of the chain is shaped by how far it is from everywhere else. It is the one part of the Keys where scheduled flights are plentiful, which makes the case for a charter different rather than weaker.

What you are buying here is not access, it is the shape of the day. A morning flight down, an afternoon that runs as long as it runs, and a return leg at an hour you name while you are still sitting at the table.

On a schedule the last departure decides when dinner ends. On a charter dinner decides when you leave, inside daylight and crew duty. It is also the jumping-off point for what lies beyond, which is the next panel. The Key West run and the island itself have their own pages.

Between the two public fields there are smaller strips down the chain, and most of them are private ground: an owners' association, a club, a single landowner. They exist, aircraft of this size use them, and access is a permission rather than a purchase. We treat that as a question to settle before you book and not a surprise on the day.

If your address sits near one, we ask, and you get a straight answer in the quote: either the field is available to us for your date or it is not, and if it is not, the nearest public one and the drive from it are priced in instead.

This is the honest version of the promise that a private plane lands anywhere. The aircraft can use short fields. Whether a particular gate opens is somebody else's decision, and we find out rather than assume.

Some of the best reasons to come down here have nothing to land on. Dry Tortugas lies about seventy miles west of Key West with no road and no strip: it is reached by boat or by seaplane and by nothing else, which is a fact about the place rather than a limit of ours.

The same is true of addresses with water in front of them and no field behind. Where that is the case we say so at the enquiry and quote the seaplane instead, which sets down on the water and needs no runway.

It is a different aircraft and a different page, and it is why we can take almost any address in the chain rather than only the ones with a field. Parties often want both in one day: wheels down at one end, water at the other. Send the whole plan and it comes back as one day.

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 islands that is a practical difference more than a philosophical one. Rods, a cooler for the boat, dive gear, clubs, a case of something for the house: 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 ramp, and that is island logistics rather than a charter with extra bags.

The islands are a line, and an aircraft that belongs to you for the day can work along it in either direction. A morning at one end and an afternoon at the other is a normal request here rather than an unusual one, because the hops between fields are minutes rather than hours.

That is the shape of an island hopping day: lunch at one address, a boat at the next, and the aircraft moving down the chain to meet you rather than waiting where it landed. Little Palm Island and Dry Tortugas both have their own pages, and either can be the second half of a day that started somewhere else.

Send the whole itinerary at the enquiry rather than one leg at a time. It comes back priced as one day, and the full list of destinations is on the Keys page.