Seaplane from Miami to Daytona Beach

Most come for the sand first. Daytona is 23 miles of it, hard packed and about 500 feet wide at low tide, which is the reason it carries cars at all and the reason it was called the world's most famous beach long before there was a speedway. Driving on the beach is real and it is regulated. Vehicles are allowed on marked sections from sunrise to sunset between November and April and from 8am to 7pm the rest of the year, at 10 miles an hour with headlights on. Tides and weather close sections without notice, so it is a thing you do when the beach allows rather than plan a day around. The aircraft has no part in that. Seaplanes land on the river behind the beach, never on the sand and the sand is a short drive from the bank. Say how many are swimming with the date and whether you want water toys waiting.

The Daytona International Speedway is a 2.5 mile tri-oval with 31 degrees of banking in the turns and has run the Daytona 500 every February since 1959. The Rolex 24 runs in January. A race weekend is the one date where the flight is worth more than the drive: I-95 into Daytona on a race morning is the part nobody wants, and the river is minutes from the track side of town. Say which weekend when you send the date, they fill first. The track sits inland, across the Halifax and next to the airport, so it is one side of town and the water landing is the other, both inside twenty minutes by car. Outside race weeks the infield and the banking are open on tours, which makes it an afternoon rather than a whole day. Say which of the two the day is about, because that decides where ground transport should be waiting.

The Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse stands at the southern tip of the peninsula, 175 feet tall with 203 steps to the gallery. It was first lit in 1887 and it is the tallest lighthouse in Florida. Ponce Inlet itself is the quiet end of the same beach: the inlet, the jetty and the boats going out. It is about twenty minutes south of where the aircraft puts down, which puts it inside an afternoon rather than into a separate day. It is also the end of the river you land on. The Halifax runs south from the landing to the inlet at Ponce, which means a boat can do the same stretch the aircraft flew the last minute of and the beach on that side is the empty half of the same sand. Parties that want the water rather than the town usually end up here, either with water toys for the afternoon or on a beach picnic once the tide is right.

The Halifax River is the Intracoastal Waterway through this stretch and it runs behind the beach from Ormond Beach through Holly Hill, Daytona Beach, South Daytona and Port Orange. It is where the seaplane lands and it is a manatee zone, so the taxi in is slow and the wildlife has right of way. That also makes it the useful half of the day for anyone arriving by water. The marinas sit on the river rather than on the ocean, so a boat meeting the party is a dock pickup on the same water the aircraft came in on and a bigger one is a yacht transfer that never touches a pier at all.

On land it is two strips rather than one. Beach Street runs along the river on the mainland side with the older shops and restaurants and the boardwalk and the pier sit across the bridge on the ocean side. Guests who want a table rather than a boat book a fly and dine day and a party that fills the aircraft simply books the aircraft rather than a row of seats inside it, on one booking, whoever is travelling. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

Twice a year the town turns into a motorcycle rally. Bike Week runs for ten days at the end of winter and Biketoberfest takes a long weekend in October and between them they are the busiest dates on the local calendar. Both are worth naming when you send the date rather than after it. Rooms, tables and cars go first on those weekends and the roads into town are the reason people fly in the first place. A milestone weekend built around one of them is a different plan from a quiet Tuesday.

Ormond Beach sits directly north of Daytona and shares the same sand. Between 1903 and 1935 most of the land speed records set in the United States were set on it: Henry Segrave took the Golden Arrow to 231 miles an hour here in 1929 and Malcolm Campbell reached 276 in 1935. The first was set here in 1904 at 92 miles an hour, which gives the measure of what the sand was worth. When the cars outgrew the beach the racing moved inland and the beach kept the name. It is a ten minute drive north from the landing and the beach there is the quiet version of the one in front of the pier. Worth knowing if the party wants the sand without the boardwalk and worth knowing on a rally weekend, when the quiet half is the reason to be north of the bridge rather than south of it.

A private seaplane charter Miami to Daytona Beach also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on north to Jacksonville, inland toward Orlando or back down the coast through Vero Beach, Stuart and West Palm Beach. Orlando is 56 miles from the beach by road and the space coast about 62, so a party that lands on the river in the morning can be at either by the afternoon. Overnight changes the baggage, not the route. If a boat is meeting you, the aircraft can set the party down alongside instead of at a pier. That is a yacht transfer, the reason a good number of these flights happen. The full guide to the town sits on the Daytona Beach destination page, the packaged version is the Daytona Beach getaway day trip and the rest of the coast is on the Florida destinations page.