The Run South
Seaplane from Miami to Key West by Private Charter
Key West is the last island on the Overseas Highway and the road to it is the reason most people never go for a single day. Old Town lies about 131 statute miles from downtown Miami, 114 nautical. The drive covers every one of them at ground level. A seaplane crosses the same water in under an hour and finishes where the highway runs out, on Key West.
Almost the whole line is water. The aircraft lifts off Biscayne Bay, turns down the chain and follows it low enough to read the bottom. The flats run pale green on the bay side, the reef line sits dark to the east and the two of them stay in the window from Key Largo to the last bridge.
Everything between the two ends is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, the slot on the day and the set-down at the far end, on the water or on a runway, which is what amphibious access means in practice. Your party brings a bag and turns up.
This is the full length of the Keys in one leg 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.
Plan Your Key West Charter
How It Works
How a Miami to Key West Seaplane Actually Works
Key West is still Florida, and what usually makes an island day fragile is simply absent here. What is left decides the day instead: where the aircraft sets down at the far end and how much light is left when you want to come home.
Both are settled with the itinerary rather than on the morning. What follows is the whole sequence in order, from the water in Miami to the last island on the highway.
Plan Your Key West CharterDistance and Time
About 131 miles of Keys and open water, with under an hour of it in the air
Downtown Miami to Key West is roughly 131 statute miles, 114 nautical, with nearly all of it water. On floats that is a little under an hour airborne against three to four hours on the road, each way, plus the taxi out at the Miami end.
The Whole Aircraft
The aircraft is chartered whole, so your party flies to Key West together and comes home together
The aircraft stays at Key West rather than turning around, so six hours ashore means six hours.
Floats or Wheels
The same aircraft can finish on the water or on the runway at Key West
Key West International carries the runway, identifier EYW, at the eastern end of the island. An amphibious seaplane does not need it: it puts down on the water and the party steps off by the harbour instead. Which of the two we use is fixed with the itinerary before you book, not on the day. The mechanics sit in the water landing guide and in amphibious access.
What You Carry
The passenger list goes in when you book, not at the dock
What identification the operator puts on the manifest is in the travel documents guidance, and nothing else is asked of a guest before the day. Names, a headcount and an honest idea of what is coming with you are the whole list.
Daylight
Water landings run on daylight, so the return leg carries a clock from the start
Landings on water run from 30 minutes after sunrise to 30 minutes before sunset, so the day has a hard end rather than an open one. That window moves through the year, so the last useful departure moves with your date and it comes back with the boarding time. A return that would arrive after dark lands on the runway instead.
The Road
The alternative is the Overseas Highway and it costs the part of the day you came for
US-1 runs 113 miles through the Florida Keys to get here, over more than forty bridges including the seven mile one. It takes three hours on a clear morning and four when Miami is Miami. That is six to eight hours of a single day spent on the road.
On an overnight the drive is defensible and the stops are half the point. On one day it is the day, so the packaged version of this is a Key West day trip by air and why the same aircraft serves every other seaplane charter in the Keys.
Departure Points
Departure Points for a Seaplane Miami to Key West
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.
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 Key West from Miami
Chartering a seaplane is not booking a seat. There are four steps, and only the first one is yours.
Plan Your Key West 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 Seaplane Flights from Miami to Key West Put You Down
Key West is a small island at the end of a hundred and thirteen miles of bridges and almost everything a visitor comes for sits in the old half of it, within a walk of the harbour. That is the whole reason a single day here works by air and does not by road.
What follows is what parties actually do with the hours in between, in the order they ask for it.
Plan Your Key West CharterOld Town and Duval Street
Most Asked For
Most of what people come for is in the old half of the island and it is a walk rather than a drive. Duval Street runs the width of it from the harbour side to the Atlantic side. The bars, the galleries and the restaurants are strung along it and through the lanes either side.
That density is the reason a single day works here at all. A party that lands in the morning is eating lunch in the old town twenty minutes later, without a car and without a plan, which is not true of anywhere else at this end of the chain.
Guests who want a table booked rather than found take a fly and dine day and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.
The Flats and the Tarpon
Fishing Days
If the day is about fish rather than sightseeing, the water behind the island is the reason people come. The flats hold bonefish and permit and the tarpon run through the channels in spring.
The water is shallow and clear for miles, so the guides here pole rather than motor and why the fishing is sight fishing rather than a day of waiting. Parties book bonefishing and flats access or a full fishing day by seaplane. Rods and gear travel within the payload for the aircraft on the day.
The Key West Beaches
A Short Ride
The beaches are the other half of it and they are on the Atlantic side rather than the harbour side. They are calm, shallow and shaded in places, which suits a party with children better than open water does.
Nothing here is far enough away to need planning: the whole island is a few minutes end to end once you are on it, so an afternoon on the sand and an evening in the old town both fit inside the same day.
Add water toys if the party wants the afternoon on the water rather than beside it, or a beach picnic if the point is to be somewhere quieter than the public sand.
The Southernmost Point and the Hemingway House
What People Photograph
Key West is the southernmost city in the continental United States and it makes a great deal of that. The marker is a painted concrete buoy at the water's edge and the island behind it is closer to Havana, ninety four miles away, than it is to Miami.
The Hemingway house is the other thing every first visit walks to. Both sit inside the same few streets as the harbour, so a first day here is done on foot and why the flight is the only part of it that needs arranging.
The Backcountry Islands
Boat or Air Only
North and west of the island the water goes shallow and empty and the keys out there have no road, no bridge and no dock. They are reached by boat or by air and by nothing else, which is the one thing a seaplane does on this route that no other aircraft can.
That is where the empty sand is and where a day stops looking like a holiday town and starts looking like the pictures. A beach picnic goes out here rather than on the public beach and a dock pickup puts the party onto a boat instead if the afternoon is on the water.
Little Palm Island and the Lower Keys
Same Aircraft
Not every day that ends in the lower keys ends in Key West. Little Palm Island is a private resort island with no road to it: it is reached by seaplane, ferry or yacht, so it turns up so often on a charter out of Miami.
The same is true of the quieter keys on the way down, Big Pine Key and Sugarloaf Key among them. A resort transfer is the same flight with a different set-down and the day is booked once rather than in three parts.
Mallory Square, the Fort and the Lighthouses
The Sunset Side
The harbour side of the island is where the day ends. Mallory Square opens onto the water for the sunset and Fort Zachary Taylor sits on the point below it with the quietest beach on the island behind its walls.
From the air the same line reads as a string of lighthouses out on the reef, Sand Key nearest and the others spread east along the chain. That is the reason a scenic flight here is flown low and slow. A sunset flight home turns the return leg into the best part of the day.
Onward to the Dry Tortugas
Seventy Miles West
Key West is the end of the highway and not the end of the chain. The islands carry on west for another seventy miles as sand keys, shoals and reef. They finish at the Dry Tortugas, where Fort Jefferson stands alone on Garden Key. That leg is normally flown in two parts, the run into Key West and the crossing west.
Whether the landing inside the park is on the table for your party is answered before it is booked. Everything nearer than that, Key Largo, Islamorada and Marathon, is already under the flight path on the way down, which is what turns one island into island hopping.
Ready When You Are
Ready to Book a Seaplane from Miami to Key West?
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 Key West Add-Ons
Anything else you have in mind is arranged with the flight.
In Detail
Seaplane from Miami to Key West: The Chain, the Water and the Last Island
Everything above is the day. What follows is the detail behind it: what the island end looks like, where the aircraft sets down, what charter and private actually change and how far the same aircraft carries on past the Florida Keys.
Miami to Key West Seaplane: Flying Low Over the Reef and the Flats
Room enough and a window each on a Key West 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. Old Town lies about 131 statute miles from downtown Miami, 114 nautical. Everything between the two ends is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, the slot on the day and the set-down at the far end, on the water or on a runway, which is what amphibious access means in practice. 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. The backcountry keys west and north of the island have no road and no dock, so they are reached by boat or by air and by nothing else. 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 Miami to Key West: You Decide the Departure Time
Your hour, your names and a seaplane to Key West
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 Key West 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. Everything between the two ends is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, the slot on the day and the set-down at the far end, on the water or on a runway, which is what amphibious access means in practice. 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.
Seaplane to Key West from Miami: Nothing to File, Nothing to Carry
No customs and no check-in desk on a Key West charter
A seaplane from Miami to Key West stays inside Florida, so there is no border to clear and no paperwork anybody has to file. The flight never leaves the country, so there is no declaration, no port of entry and no passport check at either end. Your party needs photo identification and nothing more. The hold is yours too, so seaplanes in the fleet are matched to the load and a small plane on floats carries eight, nine in some configurations. Everything around the flight is settled from our side before your party arrives, from the slot at both ends to the handling on the ramp. A chartered aircraft sits at Key West until your party is finished, so six hours ashore is six hours. Your party walks from the car to the aircraft and the bags go on in front of you. What may travel sits in the baggage guidance. A departure moved by weather runs under the weather and delays policy, and a name added or dropped before the flight is a message to us rather than a problem for you.
Seaplane Miami Key West: Milestone Days and Florida Weekends
A day trip, a weekend or something to celebrate on Key West
A private seaplane from Miami to Key West 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 Key West 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 Key West: Questions Answered
How long is the seaplane flight from Miami to Key West?
A little under an hour in the air. Old Town lies about 131 statute miles from downtown Miami, 114 nautical, with nearly all of it water. The exact block time depends on the aircraft and on which of the four Miami departure points you leave from and it is confirmed with the boarding time before you book. The same distance takes three to four hours by road, each way.
Can the seaplane come alongside a dock in Key West?
Often, yes. The aircraft is amphibious and carries floats and wheels, so the arrival can be the water beside the island or the runway at the eastern end. Which one your day uses is fixed with the itinerary before you book rather than decided on the morning. Send the coordinates with the enquiry and the pilots decide whether they can put down there.
Where does a seaplane land in Key West?
Either on the water beside the island or on the runway at Key West International, identifier EYW, at the eastern end. An amphibious seaplane carries floats and wheels and can use both, which is the point of it. Which one your day uses is fixed with the itinerary before you book rather than decided on the morning, so the party lands on the island either way.
Can you do Key West as a day trip from Miami?
Yes and by air it is the only version that leaves you a day once you arrive. Out in the morning, back before dark, with the aircraft waiting on the island rather than turning around, so six hours ashore means six hours. The same day by road is six to eight hours of driving. The packaged version of this is our Key West day trip; this page is the flight itself.
How late can we fly back from Key West 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.
That window moves through the year, which is why the last useful departure for your date comes back with the boarding time rather than as a rule of thumb. A return arriving after dark lands on the runway instead of on water.
How many people can fly to Key West 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. A small plane on floats carries eight, nine in some configurations. What fits your date also depends on the payload once baggage is aboard. Send the headcount and say whether children are travelling: they count as passengers on the manifest.
How much luggage can we take to Key West and can we bring rods or dive gear?
Rods, dive gear and hard cases all travel regularly, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. There is no fixed allowance per head: a float aircraft is payload limited, so the operator runs passenger weights, bags and fuel through one calculation. That is why bulky equipment is declared when you book rather than weighed at the slip. The figure for your party stands in the itinerary.
What happens if the weather stops the Key West flight?
Water operations depend on wind and visibility as well as the forecast, so a departure can move on a day that looks clear from the beach and summer afternoons move return legs more often than mornings.
On an amphibious aircraft the usual answer is a runway arrival rather than a cancellation. The call belongs to the operator and because the aircraft carries only your party, a new slot is agreed with you rather than assigned to you.
Is it better to fly or drive from Miami to Key West?
It depends how long you are staying. US-1 runs 113 miles through the Keys over more than forty bridges and the drive takes three hours on a clear morning and four when Miami is Miami.
On a long weekend the stops along the way are half the point and the drive is worth it. On a single day the road costs six to eight hours, which is the part of the day you came for.
Can you fly to Key West from Fort Lauderdale or West Palm Beach instead?
Yes. Key West is reachable from every departure point in the corridor and the right one is the one closest to where you are staying, not the one closest to the island: an hour saved on the ground is worth more than a few minutes saved in the air. Say where the morning starts and the answer comes back with the departure point already chosen.
What does a private seaplane charter from Miami to Key West 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 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.
Can the seaplane take us on to the Dry Tortugas or another key the same day?
Yes. Key West is the end of the highway but not the end of the chain: the Dry Tortugas lie seventy miles further west and Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon and the lower keys all sit under the same flight path on the way down.
Say so when you send the date, because a second leg changes the aircraft and the timing. For the park itself, whether the landing inside the park is on the table for your party is answered before you book.
What is there to see on the flight down from Miami to Key West?
Almost all of it is water, flown low. The flats run pale green on the bay side, the reef line sits dark to the east, the Overseas Highway threads the islands underneath with the seven mile bridge halfway along and the backcountry keys west of Key West have no road and no dock at all. On the way home the same line runs back into the light.
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 Key West?
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 Key West day costs.
- 24/7 support
- Fast response
- No obligation
Explore
