The Crossing
Seaplane from Miami to Big Major Cay by Private Charter
Nobody lives on Big Major Cay. There is no airstrip on it, no terminal and no scheduled anything, so the pigs that made the beach famous swim out to whatever arrives. A seaplane from Miami to Big Major Cay is the one aircraft that finishes at the beach itself rather than a boat ride short of it.
The cay lies in the Exuma Cays, about 259 statute miles from downtown Miami and roughly 225 nautical, almost all of it open water. On floats that is about an hour and a half in the air. The border adds a stop, so the door to door figure for the day is nearer two hours out.
What sits between those two numbers is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, the customs stop the chain forces on you, both government filings and the travel documents the Bahamas wants before anybody leaves Florida. Your party brings passports and a bag.
This is one of the longer crossings we fly from a seaplane base in Miami and one of several seaplane routes out of the city. The aircraft is a small plane on floats, eight seats and nine in some configurations.
It is the same airframe whether the day finishes at the beach, alongside a boat or at the strip on the cay next door. Which of the three it is gets decided with you rather than for you.
Plan Your Big Major Cay Charter
How It Works
How a Seaplane Miami to Big Major Cay Actually Works
A seaplane Miami to Big Major Cay flight is two problems, not one. The first is distance and it is the easy half. The second is that the cay you are aiming at is not a port of entry and never will be.
Nobody clears customs on an uninhabited island, so the aircraft meets the border somewhere else first and flies the last stretch afterwards. What follows is the whole sequence in order, from the water at the Miami end to the ramp where the day finishes on the way home.
Plan Your Big Major Cay CharterDistance and Time to Big Major Cay
Two hundred and twenty five nautical miles of open water and about an hour and a half of it in the air
Downtown Miami to Big Major Cay is roughly 259 statute miles, about 225 nautical and almost none of that is over land. On floats it works out at roughly an hour and a half airborne. The customs stop and the taxi at both ends are what turn that into the length of the morning.
The Whole Aircraft to Big Major Cay
The aircraft is chartered whole, so your party flies to Big Major Cay together and comes home together
The aircraft stays with you rather than turning around, so five hours in the Exumas means five hours.
The Water Landing at Big Major Cay
The floats put you down on the water off Pig Beach, where there is no runway and no dock to use
The cay carries no airstrip and no pier. A wheeled aircraft therefore lands at Staniel Cay a little over a mile away and the day continues by boat. A seaplane skips that leg and anchors off the beach.
Water landing sites in the Bahamas are approved individually by the civil aviation authority rather than assumed, which is one of the things arranged before your date. The mechanics sit in the water landing guide.
Leaving Miami for Big Major Cay
Leaving Miami for Big Major Cay means the manifest is filed long before you reach the dock
Every passenger needs a valid passport, children included and a driving licence will not do. What counts as valid is in the travel documents guidance. Names and numbers go in from our side, in advance.
Clearing Into the Bahamas on the Way to Big Major Cay
The Bahamas wants your first landing at a port of entry and an uninhabited cay is not one
An aircraft may enter the country only at a designated port of entry. Staniel Cay, the nearest strip to Big Major Cay, has no customs and immigration desk, so it cannot be the first stop either.
The usual answer is Andros, which carries three ports of entry with both a strip and a dock and North Eleuthera is the other. You land, the officers see the passports, the forms were filed from Florida and it is quick. Then the aircraft flies the last leg and puts the floats down off the beach.
The Way Back From Big Major Cay
The way back carries its own clock and it usually ends at US customs in Opa-locka
Water landings run only from 30 minutes after sunrise to 30 minutes before sunset, so nothing on floats arrives in the dark and the return leg has a deadline from the moment the date is set.
Bahamian customs desks keep daytime hours that close before the sun does and out here the clearance is a separate stop rather than a walk across the ramp, so it is the desk and not the daylight that fixes your departure. Both clocks move through the year, so the latest useful departure comes with the quote.
The return is filed with US Customs before you leave and that filing decides where the aircraft may put down in South Florida. Opa-locka Executive is where a return from the islands clears, so a day that began on the water finishes on a ramp. We take care of both ends of any chartered flight from Miami to the Bahamas.
Departure Points
Departure Points for a Seaplane Miami to Big Major Cay
A seaplane needs no airport at the Miami end, so the departure point follows your morning rather than the aircraft. Two of these four put you on the water, two on a ramp.
Miami Seaplane Base
555 NE 15th St, Miami
The water departure, on Biscayne Bay just north of downtown. Boarding is from the dock, so nothing between the car and the aircraft looks like an airport. The shortest ground leg for Brickell, downtown and the beach and the usual choice when a yacht is the other half of the day.
Opa-locka Executive
Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport, OPF
The executive airport north west of the city, with private terminal handling at both ends of the day. It is also where a return from the islands clears US customs, which is why an international day that leaves from the water often comes back here rather than to the dock it started from.
Miami Executive
Miami Executive Airport, TMB, Kendall
Kendall-Tamiami, in the south west of the county. When the aircraft for your date is already based at this field, the charter starts without a positioning leg. That matters most on a same day return, where an hour lost in Florida is an hour lost at the far end.
Miami International
Miami International Airport, MIA
A pickup rather than a base and the right one when the party is already landing at MIA and the onward leg should leave from the same airport. No aircraft is stationed here, so it is arranged per flight and confirmed with the operator before it is quoted.
How to Charter
How to Charter a Seaplane to Big Major Cay from Miami
Chartering a seaplane is not booking a seat. There are four steps, and only the first one is yours.
Plan Your Big Major Cay Charter- 01
Contact Us
Write to us on WhatsApp or by email. Send your dates, how many guests, where you are coming from and where you want to travel. Tell us the hour you would like to leave. A seaplane lands on water and on runways. Your pickup can be a marina, a hotel dock or a beach, and an airport works just as well.
- 02
Get Aircraft and Prices Back
We check what is free on your date and send the seaplanes that fit. Seats, baggage and flight time for each one. Every aircraft costs a little differently, so we can find the best fit for you.
- 03
Confirm and Pay
You pick the aircraft, and we set the pickup point and the landing site. Then everything around the flight. Catering on board, a car or a golf cart waiting when you land, ground transport to your hotel or back to the airport.
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 Early
You will have no terminal and no queue. Just make sure you are there 30 minutes before. Then you take off, land right at your destination, and enjoy the day.
On the Water
Where a Miami to Big Major Cay Seaplane Puts You Down
Big Major Cay is a low hook of sand and scrub with nobody on it and the water landing puts you at the beach rather than a mile away with a boat still to find. Everything else worth a day out here sits within a few minutes of the anchorage by boat.
What follows is what parties actually do with the hours in between, in the order they ask for it.
Plan Your Big Major Cay CharterThe Pigs and the Beach
Most Asked For
This is what everyone comes for. The pigs live on the cay unfenced and unowned, they hear an engine and they come off the sand into the water and for most guests the whole thing is over in an hour and remembered for years. Nobody can prove how they got there.
The version told most often has sailors putting them ashore meaning to come back for them and the competing accounts have them swimming off a wreck or being stocked from the next cay. No single documented account exists, which is unusual for something this photographed.
Two practical things are worth saying before the date is set. The first is that they are wild animals rather than an attraction with a fence, so the boat operators who work here set the distance rather than the guests. The second is food: bring none of your own. The wrong food is the one way visitors have genuinely harmed them and the operators carry what is right.
Staniel Cay, a Mile North
Minutes by Boat
Big Major Cay has no settlement, so everything with a roof on it is on Staniel Cay, a little over a mile away. That is the yacht club, the two small groceries, the airstrip and the fuel and it is a few minutes across in a boat.
That closeness is the whole reason a day here works. Guests who land on the water off the beach are within minutes of lunch ashore and parties who arrive on the strip are within minutes of the pigs. It is the same afternoon either way and the difference is only where the transfer sits.
Worth knowing: the strip has no customs and immigration desk, so it is never the first landing on a flight in from Florida, whether the aircraft is on floats or on wheels.
That single fact shapes the morning more than the distance does, because it puts a second landing into a route that looks like one hop on a map. The full picture of that cay is on the Miami to Staniel Cay page.
The Nurse Sharks at Compass Cay
Shallow Water
A few minutes north of the anchorage, nurse sharks gather at the marina dock on Compass Cay in water shallow enough to stand in. It is what the cay is known for worldwide and the second most asked for thing out here after the pigs, so a boat afternoon usually takes both.
They are bottom feeders with no interest in people, so this is the stop that works with children along. Nobody has to get in: they come to the dock itself, so a guest who stays dry sees the same thing as the one who swims. Stingrays and sea turtles turn up in the same shallows and the water is clear enough to spot them from the dock.
Thunderball Grotto
Snorkel Depth
The grotto is a limestone cave in the water off Staniel Cay with openings in the roof that drop light into it and it took its name from the 1965 James Bond film shot there. It is minutes from the anchorage.
The swim in is short and the tide decides it rather than the schedule: slack water at low tide is when the entrance is easy and the current is not working against you. That is one of the few parts of a day here set by the sea rather than by the aircraft, so it is worth naming when you send the date rather than deciding on the morning.
The Iguanas on Bitter Guana Cay
Protected Species
A short run south, the beach on Bitter Guana Cay is held by Northern Bahamian rock iguanas, an endangered species that lives nowhere else in the world. They walk down onto the sand when a boat comes in.
It is a protected population rather than a petting zoo, so the rules are stricter than at the pigs and the operators keep to them. For parties with an interest in the wildlife rather than the photographs, this is usually the stop they talk about afterwards.
The Plane Wrecks
Six Feet of Water
There are two of them out here and they get confused with each other constantly. The near one lies in about six feet of water within half a mile of the yacht club at Staniel Cay, shallow enough that the snorkellers and the divers are looking at the same thing from different depths.
The famous one is further up the chain at Norman's Cay, a Curtiss C-46 that came down in the shallows in the smuggling years and is still lying there. It is a separate trip rather than an add-on to an afternoon around Big Major Cay and the aircraft can take it in on the way through if the day is built that way.
Pipe Creek and the Sandbars
Low Water Only
North of the pigs the chain breaks up into Pipe Creek, a run of small cays and shallow channels where the bank dries into open sand at low water. There is nothing on it and nothing around it. That is where a beach picnic goes and where the rays come in shin deep.
Add water toys if the party wants the afternoon on the water rather than on the sand, or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you. Low water is what decides the hour here rather than the one you would prefer and the sandbars sit on the same northward line as the shark dock, so a boat afternoon runs as one loop rather than three separate errands.
Onward Down the Chain
Same Aircraft
A private seaplane charter Miami to Big Major Cay also works as one leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on north and south to Nassau, Harbour Island, Andros, Grand Bahama or further down the Exumas. That is what turns one cay into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day.
Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. If a yacht is meeting you, the aircraft can set the party down alongside instead of at a beach. That is a yacht transfer and out here, where there is no pier to tie to anyway, it is one of the commoner reasons these flights happen at all.
The full island guide sits on the Big Major Cay destination page, the packaged version is the Big Major Cay getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page, where the cays either side of this one sit together rather than one at a time.
This page stays on the crossing itself, which is the part that has to be arranged rather than chosen on the day.
Ready When You Are
Ready to Book Seaplane Flights from Miami to Big Major Cay?
Send the departure point, the number of guests and from when to when. You get back what is free on your dates, the boarding time and what the day costs, before anything is booked.
Add-Ons
Seaplane to Big Major Cay Add-Ons
Anything else you have in mind is arranged with the flight.
In Detail
Seaplane from Miami to Big Major Cay: The Crossing, the Border and a Beach With No Pier
Everything above is the day. What follows is the detail behind it: the crossing, the customs stop, the arrival off the beach and what charter and private actually change about a flight to the Bahamas.
Seaplane Miami to Big Major Cay: Flying Low Over the Reef and the Flats
Room enough and a window each on a Big Major Cay seaplane
The crossing is not dead time between two airports. A seaplane runs low and slow, so the water under the wing is the first thing the day gives you. The cay lies in the Exuma Cays, about 259 statute miles from downtown Miami and roughly 225 nautical, almost all of it open water. What sits between those two numbers is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, the customs stop the chain forces on you, both government filings and the travel documents the Bahamas wants before anybody leaves Florida. A chartered aircraft sits at the anchorage until your party is finished, so five hours in the Exumas is five hours and not whatever is left after a group of strangers has had its turn on the beach. Every seat is a window seat on seaplanes in the fleet of this size, so nobody watches the crossing over someone's shoulder. Other seaplane routes from Miami fly the same way.
Seaplane to Big Major Cay from Miami: You Decide the Departure Time
Your hour, your names and a seaplane to Big Major Cay
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 Big Major Cay 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. If the drive is shorter the other way, the same day runs out of Fort Lauderdale. 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. A shared seat leaves when the schedule says and turns you around when the schedule says. 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.
Miami to Big Major Cay Beach Seaplane: The Crew Files Both Borders, You Carry a Passport
Passports are all your party carries on a Big Major Cay crossing
A seaplane from Miami to Big Major Cay 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. Your party carries a valid passport and nothing else. 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 Opa-locka Executive, 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.
Seaplane Miami Big Major Cay: Milestone Days and Bahamas Weekends
A day trip, a weekend or a celebration on Big Major Cay
A private seaplane from Miami to Big Major Cay 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 seaplane Miami Big Major Cay charter is for. A seaplane Miami Big Major Cay charter is booked when the day matters more than the fare: a birthday, a first look at the Exumas, a family that wants the pigs to itself for an hour. The customs stop and the latest useful departure for your date come back in the same message, so the shape of the day is settled before anything is booked. 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
Seaplane from Miami to Big Major Cay: Questions Answered
How long is the seaplane flight from Miami to Big Major Cay?
About an hour and a half in the air. Big Major Cay lies roughly 259 statute miles from downtown Miami, about 225 nautical and almost all of that is open water.
The day is longer than the flight, because the Bahamas requires a stop at a port of entry on the way in and there is no customs desk anywhere near the cay. The exact block time depends on the aircraft and the departure point and it is confirmed with the boarding time before you book.
Where is Big Major Cay?
In the Exuma Cays, in the central Bahamas, about 83 miles southeast of Nassau and a little over a mile from Staniel Cay.
It is one of the hundreds of small cays that make up the Exumas and it is uninhabited, so it has no settlement, no airstrip and no pier. From Miami it is roughly 259 statute miles across open water, which is why almost everyone arrives by air rather than by boat.
What is on Big Major Cay?
Sand, scrub, three freshwater springs and the pigs. There are no hotels, no shops and nobody living there, which is the whole character of the place: you arrive, you spend the hours you booked and you leave nothing behind. That emptiness is also why the arrangements matter more than they would somewhere with a marina, because everything you want for the day travels with you on the aircraft.
How did the pigs get to Big Major Cay?
Nobody can prove it. The story told most often is that sailors put them ashore meaning to come back for them and never did and other accounts have them swimming from a wreck or being left there by people on the next cay. The honest answer is that no single documented account exists, which has not stopped the pigs from becoming the most photographed animals in the Bahamas.
Do I need a passport to fly to Big Major Cay?
Yes. The Exumas are in the Bahamas, so this is an international flight and every passenger needs a valid passport, children and infants included. Full names and passport numbers go in when you book rather than at the dock, because both border filings are made in advance from our side. There is no check-in desk on this route and nothing to hand over at the slip.
How does customs work on a seaplane flight to Big Major Cay?
An aircraft may enter the Bahamas only at a designated port of entry and neither Big Major Cay nor the strip at Staniel Cay next door has customs and immigration on it. So the aircraft clears somewhere that does, usually Andros, which carries three ports of entry with a strip and a dock apiece and North Eleuthera is the other common answer.
That stop is planned into the route rather than added on the day. None of the paperwork is yours: we make both filings and arrange the clearance, so your part is the enquiry.
Can a seaplane really land at Big Major Cay?
That is the point of the aircraft. There is no runway on the cay and no pier to tie to, so floats put the party down on the water and you step off into the shallows.
Water landing sites in the Bahamas are approved individually by the civil aviation authority rather than assumed, so the site for your date is arranged in advance along with the clearance. If the water is wrong on the morning, the honest alternative is the strip at Staniel Cay and a short boat ride and we say so rather than fly you out to find out.
Can you do Big Major Cay as a day trip from Miami?
Yes and it is the most common way parties do it. Out early, back before dark, with the aircraft waiting at the anchorage rather than turning around, so the hours you booked in the Exumas are the hours you get.
The customs stop is planned into the morning and both borders are filed in advance from our side. It makes for a long day rather than a short one, which is worth knowing when there are small children in the party.
How late can we fly back from Big Major Cay on the same day?
A seaplane needs daylight on the water. Landings run from 30 minutes after sunrise to 30 minutes before sunset, so the day has a hard end rather than an open one.
Bahamian customs desks close earlier than the sun does and out here the clearance is a separate stop rather than a walk across the ramp, so in practice it is the desk that sets the return. Both clocks move through the year, which is why the latest departure for your date comes with the quote.
How many people can fly to Big Major Cay on one charter?
The aircraft is chartered whole rather than sold by the seat, so your party travels together on one booking and comes home on the same aircraft.
How many seats that is depends on which aircraft flies your date and on the payload once baggage is aboard, so it is confirmed with the quote rather than promised in advance. Send the headcount and say whether children are travelling: they count as passengers on an international manifest.
What should we bring for a day at Big Major Cay?
Everything you want, because the cay has nothing. Water, shade, swimming things and a dry bag for cameras and food if the day is built around the beach rather than around Staniel Cay next door.
Bring nothing to feed the pigs unless it comes with a boat operator who knows what they are doing, because the wrong food is the one way visitors have genuinely harmed them. The limit is a weight rather than a bag count, so tell us what is coming when you book.
Is it better to fly to Staniel Cay and take a boat, or land at Big Major Cay?
It depends on the day you want. The strip at Staniel Cay is a little over a mile away and a boat covers that in minutes, so a wheeled aircraft plus a boat is a perfectly good way to see the pigs and it is what most visitors do.
A seaplane removes the transfer and the waiting either side of it, which matters most when the party is large, when there are children or when the hours ashore are short. On a rough morning it goes the other way and the strip is the better answer.
Can the seaplane take us on from Big Major Cay to another island the same day?
Yes. The cay sits in the middle of the Exuma chain rather than at the end of it and the same aircraft carries on to Staniel Cay, Compass Cay, Great Exuma, Nassau or Harbour Island.
Say so when you send the date, because a second leg changes the timing and the clearance is planned around the port of entry rather than around the stop you want. For a yacht or a private cay we pass the coordinates, the pilots decide whether they can put down there and a tender has to be in the water to collect you.
Can I bring a pet on a seaplane 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 Seaplane Charter Miami to Big Major Cay?
Send the departure point, the party size and from when to when. Nothing else needs planning: you get back what is free on your dates, the boarding time and what the Big Major Cay day costs. The customs stop and the latest useful departure for your date come back in the same message, so the shape of the day is settled before anything is booked.
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