Private Plane Charter Miami to Great Exuma

The single biggest thing a charter changes on this crossing happens before you see the island at all: you do not stop anywhere on the way. Scheduled routings to the southern Exumas usually hand you a connection, and a connection costs a landing, a wait and a second boarding in each direction.

Great Exuma handles its arriving aircraft on its own field, so the paperwork we filed from Florida is dealt with where you land and nowhere else.

For a party that left Miami in the morning, that is the difference between reaching the island before lunch and reaching it in the afternoon. From there the island is yours until you say otherwise. Nobody is holding a return time over you.

George Town is built around a saltwater pond in the middle of it, with the government building, the straw market and the shops on the streets that run off it. The church sits up on the rise above the main road, which is where most people end up for the view rather than the walk.

It is small enough to cover on foot in an hour, and that is exactly why the hour matters. A party tied to a published return spends it deciding what to skip. Ask for ground transport at the enquiry and something is waiting when the door opens, which on an island this shape saves more time than it sounds.

A row of small kitchens sits on the water just north of the town, each one its own building, painted its own colour. Conch in several forms, fried fish, cracked conch, pork and chicken. It fills up on Friday and Sunday evenings and stays quiet the rest of the week.

Whether that is lunch or dinner is a question about your departure hour, and on a charter your departure hour is a question about lunch. That is the whole trade: a party that wants the evening version tells us at the enquiry and the aircraft leaves later, inside daylight. A party that wants the quiet version goes on a Tuesday.

If the day is built around a table somewhere specific not around the island, that is a fly and dine day and we would rather hear it early than well.

Green turtles come in close to the shallows along the bay north of town, and the access is off the main road rather than through anywhere. It is a stop of half an hour that people talk about afterwards more than they expected to.

It is also the clearest small example of what an unscheduled day buys. A stop like this is the first thing dropped when a return departure is fixed, because it sits in the wrong part of the afternoon. On a chartered aircraft it is simply something you do on the way back to the field.

The long thin island facing the town across the water carries the beaches most parties come for, with walking tracks over the ridge and shallow water on the far side. Boats run across from town and the crossing is short. This is the step where a private schedule shows itself.

A group working backwards from a published return leaves the sand early to be safe. A chartered aircraft has no such clock: you cross when you want to, stay as long as the afternoon deserves, and come back when you are finished. What there is to do once you are over there belongs on the Great Exuma destination page rather than here.

If getting on the water is the point of the day rather than a part of it, a seaplane lands on it directly and is a different page and a different aircraft.

A bridge at the south end joins Great Exuma to Little Exuma, and the road carries on past it to the beaches at the far end, including the one on the line of the Tropic of Cancer. It is a real drive rather than a hop, which is the part people underestimate.

Thirty-seven miles of island means the far end is an afternoon, not an errand. Parties who try to fit it around a fixed return usually turn back halfway. With the aircraft waiting it is a decision you make at lunch, and a custom request if you want a car arranged for it rather than found.

The cays that most people picture when they hear Exuma lie up the chain from here, and from George Town they are minutes in the air rather than the two hours they take in a fast boat. That gap is the argument for having the aircraft.

A boat day north and back eats the whole day and most of the energy; the same aircraft that brought you can put you up there and collect you, because it is not flying anybody else in between. Whether a particular cay is landable on your date is a question we put on your behalf, since several of the strips are private ground.

The chain as a whole, rather than this island, is a private plane charter to Exuma and has its own page.

Great Exuma is sometimes the first stop rather than the whole trip, and clearing in here 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 you like.

Nassau, Harbour Island, Andros, Grand Bahama 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 island and back is a Great Exuma getaway day trip. The full list is on the Bahamas destinations page.