The Crossing
Seaplane from Miami to Inagua by Private Charter
Great Inagua is the last island in the Bahamas and a seaplane from Miami to Inagua is the only way down there that ends on the water rather than at a gate. Matthew Town on Great Inagua lies about 531 statute miles from downtown Miami, just over 461 nautical and almost every mile of that is open water.
The crossing runs the length of the archipelago rather than across a channel. The aircraft lifts off Biscayne Bay, turns south east and the whole chain goes by underneath. Andros, the Exumas and Long Island pass below the floats before the salt ponds of Inagua come up pink and white against the scrub. The eastern tip of Cuba is about 55 miles from the far end of it.
Everything between those two moments 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.
This is the longest crossing we fly from a seaplane base in Miami and one of several seaplane routes out of the city. On this one the range decides the airframe before the headcount does, so the aircraft flying your date is named with the quote rather than assumed.
Plan Your Inagua Charter
How It Works
How a Seaplane Miami to Inagua Actually Works
Inagua is a different country and it is at the far end of that country, so a trip there is two border crossings and one long leg. Filed in advance it is paperwork. Left to the morning it is the reason an itinerary falls apart. The distance is the part that changes the planning.
Two governments want the passenger list before the aircraft moves and both filings sit on our side of the desk rather than yours. 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 Inagua CharterDistance and Range
Five hundred miles of open water, which makes range the first question rather than the last
Downtown Miami to Matthew Town is roughly 531 statute miles, just over 461 nautical, almost all of it water. That is the longest crossing in the Bahamas chain by a wide margin, so the airframe is matched to the leg for your date and the block time comes back with the quote rather than as a round number here.
The Whole Aircraft
The aircraft is chartered whole, so your party flies to Inagua together and comes home together
The aircraft stays on the island rather than turning around, which matters more on a long leg than on a short one: the day ashore is yours rather than a timetable's.
Water Landing
The floats land on the water off Matthew Town, so the day starts where the island does
Matthew Town carries the airstrip as well, identifiers IGA and MYIG, with a runway of a little over seven thousand feet, so this is one of the rare southern islands where water and runway sit in the same place. Which one you arrive on is a weather call rather than a preference. The mechanics sit in the water landing guide.
Leaving Miami
Leaving Miami for Inagua means the manifest is filed 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.
Arriving at Inagua
Arriving in the Bahamas means clearing at a port of entry and Matthew Town is one
The Bahamas lets an aircraft arrive only at a designated port of entry. Matthew Town is one, the airport and the docks both, which is the quiet advantage of this island over most of its neighbours: you clear where you were landing anyway. Passports out, forms already filed from Florida.
Customs officers in the Bahamas keep daytime hours of 09:00 to 17:30 and a clearance outside them carries an overtime fee. If the day ends somewhere that is not a port of entry, a cay or a beach further along, the aircraft clears here first and flies the last leg afterwards.
The Way Back
The way back carries its own clock and it ends usually 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. On a crossing this long that window and the customs desk together set the departure rather than your preference.
Both move through the year, so the latest useful departure for your date comes with the quote. A return that would arrive after dark needs a lit runway rather than water.
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 started on the water often 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 Inagua
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 Inagua from Miami
Chartering a seaplane is not booking a seat. There are four steps, and only the first one is yours.
Plan Your Inagua 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 Island
Where a Miami to Inagua Seaplane Puts You Down
Matthew Town is the only settlement on Great Inagua and the water landing puts you beside it. Everything else on the island is scrub, salt ponds and birds, which is the whole reason people come this far south.
What follows is what parties actually do with the days in between, in the order they ask for it.
Plan Your Inagua CharterThe Flamingos in Inagua National Park
Most Asked For
Most parties come for the birds and for one bird in particular. Inagua National Park covers 287 square miles, almost half the island. It holds the largest breeding colony of West Indian flamingos in the world.
The Bahamas National Trust, which has managed the park since it was declared in 1965, counts around 70,000 of them on the shallow inland lakes. The bird is the national bird of the Bahamas and the colony is the reason it still exists at that scale anywhere.
The park sits well inland from the town, so it is a drive and a warden rather than a stroll from the water. Say when you send the dates that the park is the point of the trip, because it is what decides whether one night on the island is enough. Ground transport at the Inagua end is arranged with the flight.
The Other Hundred and Forty Species
Birding Weeks
The flamingos get the photographs and the rest of the list is why serious birders book a week rather than a night. The Bahamas tourism board counts some 140 species of native and migratory birds on Inagua and calls the island the country's birdwatching capital. Among them are the Bahama parrot, which lives on only two islands in the whole country, plus a hummingbird found nowhere else, the Inagua woodstar.
Herons, egrets, spoonbills and pelicans work the same shallow water as the flamingos. A birding party travels with optics rather than luggage, which is a weight question rather than a bag count on a leg this long. Long lenses and scopes are declared when you book, per the baggage guidance.
The Salt Ponds Behind the Town
How the Island Works
Great Inagua is a salt island before it is anything else. Behind Matthew Town lie roughly 300,000 acres of ponds, one of the largest solar salt operations in North America, worked by sun and wind rather than by machinery.
The two halves of the island are the same system rather than competing ones: brine shrimp live in the ponds, the flamingos feed on the shrimp and the colour of the birds comes from exactly that. Tours of the works are available and are arranged on the ground rather than with the flight.
The Lighthouse at Matthew Town
Standing Since 1870
The Great Inagua Lighthouse has stood on the point outside Matthew Town since 1870, a white masonry tower of 113 feet whose light carries about 17 miles. It was worked by hand, with kerosene, for more than a century.
The climb is the reason it is on every list: on a clear day the eastern tip of Cuba is visible to the south west, about 55 miles off. It is a short run from where the seaplane sets you down and it is the one thing on the island that needs no arranging at all.
Union Creek and the Green Turtles
Nearly Five Thousand Acres
Union Creek is an enclosed tidal creek of close to 5,000 acres on the north west shore, set aside as a reserve in the same wave of protection as the national park.
What happens there is one of the longest running green turtle studies anywhere, run by the Bahamas National Trust with a university team from Florida and going back to the 1970s. Much of what is known about how green turtles grow and where they come from was measured in this creek. Access is through the Trust rather than on your own.
Little Inagua, Five Miles North
Nobody Lives There
Little Inagua lies about five miles north east across the channel and is 30 square miles of nothing at all. It is described as the largest uninhabited island in the Caribbean and it is a national park in its own right.
A reef reaches as much as a mile off it, which is what has kept it empty and what makes an approach a matter for the pilots rather than for a plan. It is seen from the air on the way in more often than it is landed on.
The Flats and the Deep Water
Fishing Days
If the trip is about fish rather than birds, the oceanside flats and the interior creeks hold bonefish. The fish here run large by Bahamian standards because so few people ever cast at them.
It is a wilderness rather than a lodge coast, so parties book bonefishing and flats access or a full fishing day by seaplane with a guide arranged in advance. Rods and gear travel, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.
Onward Up the Chain
Same Aircraft
A private seaplane charter Miami to Inagua also works as one end of a longer route rather than a there and back. The same aircraft works its way north through Acklins, Crooked Island, Long Island, San Salvador and Cat Island. That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider Bahamas run.
Staying over 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 pier. That is a yacht transfer and on an island with one settlement it is often the simpler half of the arrangement.
The full island guide sits on the Great Inagua destination page and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.
Ready When You Are
Ready to Book Seaplane Flights from Miami to Inagua?
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 trip costs, before anything is booked.
Add-Ons
Seaplane to Inagua Add-Ons
Anything else you have in mind is arranged with the flight.
In Detail
Seaplane from Miami to Inagua: The Longest Crossing in the Chain
Everything above is the trip. What follows is the detail behind it: the crossing, the two borders, the islands on the way down and what charter and private actually change about a flight to the Bahamas.
Seaplane Miami to Inagua: Flying Low Over the Reef and the Flats
Room enough and a window each on a Miami to Inagua 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. Matthew Town on Great Inagua lies about 531 statute miles from downtown Miami, just over 461 nautical and almost every mile of that is open water. The date comes first and the aircraft is planned around it, so a lunch that cannot move or a boat that leaves at a set hour sets the hour of the flight rather than the other way round. Great Inagua is the last island in the Bahamas and a seaplane from Miami to Inagua is the only way down there that ends on the water rather than at a gate. Inagua is a different country and it is at the far end of that country, so a trip there is two border crossings and one long leg. 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 Inagua from Miami: You Decide the Departure Time
Your hour, your names and a seaplane to Inagua
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 Inagua 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. The date comes first and the aircraft is planned around it, so a lunch that cannot move or a boat that leaves at a set hour sets the hour of the flight rather than the other way round. Send the departure point, the number of guests and from when to when. 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 Inagua Seaplane: The Crew Files Both Borders, You Carry a Passport
Passports are all your party carries on a Inagua crossing
A seaplane from Miami to Inagua 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. A seaplane to Inagua from Miami crosses an international border in each direction. 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 Inagua: Milestone Days and Bahamas Weekends
A day trip, a long weekend or something to celebrate on Inagua
A private seaplane from Miami to Inagua 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 Inagua charter is for. The date comes first and the aircraft is planned around it, so a lunch that cannot move or a boat that leaves at a set hour sets the hour of the flight rather than the other way round. 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 Inagua: Questions Answered
How far is Inagua from Miami?
Matthew Town on Great Inagua lies roughly 531 statute miles from downtown Miami, just over 461 nautical, with almost all of that open water.
It is the longest crossing in the Bahamas chain, which is why the aircraft for your date is chosen for the leg rather than for the headcount and the block time is confirmed with the quote instead of promised in advance. What sets the length of the trip is the two border filings and how long the aircraft waits for you.
Do I need a passport to fly to Inagua?
Yes. Inagua is 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.
Where does a seaplane land at Inagua?
On the water off Matthew Town, the only settlement on the island and the place where the customs desk, the salt works and the road out to the national park all start. Matthew Town also carries the island's runway, identifiers IGA and MYIG, which is unusual this far south: water and tarmac sit in the same place, so a rough morning changes the surface rather than the destination.
How does customs work on a seaplane flight to Inagua?
The Bahamas lets an aircraft arrive only at a designated port of entry and Matthew Town is one, the airport and the docks both, so you clear where you were landing anyway. Officers keep daytime hours of 09:00 to 17:30 and a clearance outside them carries an overtime fee. None of the paperwork is yours: we make both filings and arrange the clearance, so your part is the enquiry.
Can you do Inagua as a day trip from Miami?
It is the wrong island for that and we will say so. Five hundred miles each way leaves very little of a day at the far end once the daylight window and the customs hours are counted.
The things people come for are spread across an island of 596 square miles. Most parties fly down and stay, or break the leg on an island further north. Send the dates and you get an honest answer about what fits.
Why do people fly to Great Inagua?
Birds, mostly. Inagua National Park covers 287 square miles of the island and holds the largest breeding colony of West Indian flamingos in the world, around 70,000 birds by the count of the Bahamas National Trust, which manages the park.
The island records some 140 species of native and migratory birds in all. After that come the salt ponds, the 1870 lighthouse, the green turtle research at Union Creek and some very quiet bonefish flats.
What is the salt works on Inagua?
Great Inagua carries one of the largest solar salt operations in North America, spread over roughly 300,000 acres of ponds behind Matthew Town.
Sun and wind do the evaporating and the brine shrimp that live in the ponds are what the flamingos feed on, so the industry and the birds are the same system rather than two competing ones. Tours of the facility are available and are arranged on the ground rather than with the flight.
Can we see the flamingos on a short visit?
The colony is inside Inagua National Park, which takes up almost half the island and lies well inland from Matthew Town, so it is a drive rather than a walk and the park is visited with a warden. That is worth saying when you send the dates, because it decides whether one night on the island is enough. Ground transport at the Inagua end is arranged with the flight.
How many people can fly to Inagua 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 and the fuel for a long leg are 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.
How much luggage can we take and can we bring rods or long lenses?
Rods, camera cases and hard luggage all travel regularly, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. The limit is a weight rather than a bag count. On a leg this long the fuel takes a larger share of it, which is why bulky equipment is declared when you book rather than weighed at the dock. Valuable gear leaving the United States can be registered with US Customs in advance.
What happens if the weather stops the Inagua flight?
Water operations depend on wind and sea state as well as visibility, so a departure can move on a day that looks clear from the beach. A crossing of this length passes through more weather than a short one.
The call belongs to the operator rather than the guest and you are told before you book how a moved departure is handled. Because the aircraft carries only your party, a new slot is agreed with you rather than assigned to you.
Can we stop somewhere on the way down to Inagua?
Yes and on this route it is common. Cat Island, Long Island, San Salvador, Crooked Island and Acklins all sit on the line between Miami and Inagua and any of them can be a night or an afternoon on the way.
Say so when you send the dates, because a second stop changes the aircraft and the timing and the clearance is planned around the port of entry rather than around the stop you want.
What does a private seaplane charter from Miami to Inagua cost?
A charter is priced as a whole aircraft, not per seat, so the number moves with three things: which aircraft flies your date, how many of you there are once bags and fuel are aboard and how long the aircraft waits on the island.
Tell us those and you get one all-in number, with the departure point, the boarding time and the hours ashore it is based on, before anything is due. Bahamian and US entry fees are inside that number rather than added at the end.
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 Inagua?
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 Inagua trip costs.
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