The Crossing
Small Plane Flights Miami to Big Major Cay
Big Major Cay is uninhabited and it has no runway, which is the one fact that shapes this entire flight. The island is about a mile and a half long, it has no dock, no road and nobody living on it, and the nearest asphalt is Staniel Cay Airport, 1.28 miles away across the water.
So the wheels come down at Staniel Cay and the last mile is a boat, five to ten minutes of it. Staniel Cay Airport carries the identifier MYES and a strip of 3,031 feet, which is a great deal more than a small charter aircraft needs. From the apron to Pig Beach is a short ride and a shorter crossing.
It is roughly 259 miles from Miami down the chain, and almost none of what is underneath it is land. You leave Florida behind within a minute or two, cross the deep blue and then spend the second half of the flight over the Bahama Bank, where the water turns every shade turquoise has.
What that runs in block time depends on the aircraft and the departure point and it comes back with the quote.
Everything between those two moments is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, the customs stop on the way in, both border filings and the travel documents the Bahamas wants before you leave Florida. Your party brings passports and a bag.
This is one of several small plane routes out of the city. Guests who would rather not do the boat leg at all fly the same island by seaplane instead, which sets down on the water off the beach itself and is a different aircraft and a different page.
Plan Your Big Major Cay Charter
How It Works
How a Small Plane Charter Miami to Big Major Cay Actually Works
The Bahamas is a different country, so a day at Pig Beach is two border crossings and one boat ride, and none of the three are yours to organise. Nothing about the paperwork is yours except the passports.
The short version: you clear out of Florida, you touch down once on the way in to clear Bahamian customs, you carry on to the Staniel Cay strip and a boat takes you the last mile.
Plan Your Big Major Cay CharterThe Runway
A small plane to Big Major Cay lands on 3,031 feet of asphalt next door
The island is uninhabited and there is nothing on it to land on. The strip that serves it belongs to Staniel Cay, 1.28 miles north across the water, and it runs 17/35 with 3,031 feet of asphalt. That is generous for this type of aircraft, so the landing itself is an ordinary one with water at both ends of it.
The Border
Customs for a Big Major Cay flight is cleared on the way in, not in the Exumas
Staniel Cay has a runway but no border desk, so an aircraft cannot make its first Bahamian landing there. The rule governs every private arrival in the country: you touch down first at an airport of entry, clear customs and immigration, and fly the last leg afterwards.
Andros carries three of them and sits more or less on the line. The field is the crew's choice on the day and the stop is short.
Leaving Miami
Leaving Miami for Big Major Cay is the quieter of the two borders
Outbound from Florida the filing is done for you and the aircraft departs from a general aviation ramp rather than a terminal. You arrive at the departure point close to the boarding time, not two hours before it.
Coming home is the step people forget: a return from the islands clears United States customs at a designated field and the crew plans the routing around that not around the shortest line.
The Last Mile
The last mile to Big Major Cay is a boat, and it is the shortest part of the day
From the apron it is a few minutes to the water and five to ten minutes across. There is no dock at the far end because there is nothing on the island to build one for, so boats come in over sand. That last mile is arranged with the flight rather than found on arrival, and it is the one leg a seaplane does not need at all.
Weather
A small plane to Big Major Cay flies mornings a water landing would not
A paved strip is unbothered by the chop that makes settling onto open water a bad idea. The boat leg still wants reasonable conditions, but it is a five minute run in the lee of the cays rather than a landing, so it tolerates a great deal more.
What the aircraft and the boat need on the day is a crew decision, taken against published minimums, never a preference.
The Block
The small plane waits at the strip, which is what makes a Big Major Cay day trip a day trip
On a charter the airframe is yours for the block, so the return is set by you rather than by a timetable. That matters more here than on a short crossing, because the day has a boat in the middle of it and nobody wants to be watching a clock in the water.
Guests who want a night in the Exumas tell us at the enquiry and the crew and the aircraft are planned around it.
Departure Points
Departure Points for Small Plane Flights to Big Major Cay from Miami
A small plane uses short fields that a jet cannot, so the departure point is chosen for your ground time. These are the four we use around Miami. Select one to see exactly where it sits.
Miami Executive
Miami Executive Airport, TMB, Kendall
Kendall-Tamiami in the south west of the county and the field both small planes sit at, the land aircraft and the amphibian. A charter that starts here starts without a positioning leg, which is what decides an early morning on a same day return. It is also the shortest drive from the south and west of the county.
Opa-locka Executive
Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport, OPF
The executive airport north west of the city, with private terminal handling and the point most Bahamas day trips are dispatched from. It is also where a return from the islands clears US customs. That makes it the default on a Bahamas day unless the drive is against you.
Miami International
Miami International Airport, MIA
A pickup rather than a base, for a party already at MIA that wants the onward leg to leave from the same airport. Arranged per flight and confirmed with the operator before it is quoted. It costs ground time, because a commercial field moves on its own schedule.
Fort Lauderdale Executive
Fort Lauderdale Executive, FXE
Fort Lauderdale Executive, the Broward departure, with its own federal inspection station for the return from the islands. The usual choice when the group is north of Miami and the drive south would cost more time than the flight saves. The return clears there as readily as it does at Opa-locka.
How to Charter
Charter a Small Plane from Miami to Big Major Cay
Chartering an aircraft 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 small plane runs airport to airport, so for Big Major Cay it lands at Staniel Cay and we arrange the boat.
- 02
Get Aircraft and Prices Back
We check what is free on your date and send the small planes 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, the landing site and the boat at the far end. Then everything around the flight. Catering on board, a golf cart waiting on Staniel Cay, ground transport on the Florida side. 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, clear customs on the way in, and the boat is waiting when you land.
On the Island
Where a Miami to Big Major Cay Small Plane Puts You Down
The aircraft puts you on the strip at Staniel Cay, which is not the island you came for. Big Major Cay is 1.28 miles across the water and everything below is reached by boat from the same dock, so the boat is booked with the flight rather than found on arrival.
What follows is what parties actually do with the hours in between, in the order they ask for it.
Plan Your Big Major Cay CharterPig Beach on Big Major Cay
Where the Boat Stops
This is the reason for the flight. The pigs swim out to meet boats in shin-deep water off a beach that shelves so gently you step off the bow onto sand rather than onto a dock, because there is no dock.
The island is uninhabited, about a mile and a half long, and it has three freshwater springs, which is the part of the story that actually explains how anything lives there. How the pigs arrived does not have a documented answer, and anyone who tells you otherwise is repeating a legend.
Nothing on the island is arranged for visitors, which is the appeal and also the planning problem. Whatever you want on the day travels with you from the aircraft or is set up in advance through custom requests, and the island itself is covered properly on the Big Major Cay destination page.
The Airstrip Next Door
Where You LandThe runway runs 17/35 across the middle of Staniel Cay, 3,031 feet of asphalt with water at both ends. From the air it looks improbably short and from the seat it is an ordinary landing, because this type needs a fraction of it.
There is no border desk here, so this is never the first Bahamian landing of the day. Customs and immigration happen at an airport of entry on the way in and the last leg into the Exumas is flown afterwards, which is planned before you leave Florida.
The island around the strip is a proper village with a marina and somewhere to eat, and it has its own page as a destination in its own right at Miami to Staniel Cay by small plane. For a Big Major Cay day it is the place the aircraft waits while you are on the water.
Compass Cay and the Nurse Sharks
Eight Minutes North
Compass Cay is roughly eight minutes further on by boat and the draw is the marina dock, where nurse sharks gather in water shallow enough to stand in. They are used to people and they are the reason most parties add this stop rather than heading straight back.
It is the natural second half of the same boat trip, so the boat time is worth deciding at the enquiry rather than on the day. Told in advance, the crew and the boat plan one continuous run instead of two.
Thunderball Grotto
Slack Water Only
The grotto sits just off Staniel Cay and it takes its name from the 1965 Bond film that was shot in it. From the outside it is a rock dome in the shallows. Inside it is a chamber with light coming down through holes in the roof and fish in numbers that do not look real.
It is snorkelled at slack water, which is a genuine constraint rather than a preference: the current through the cut runs hard either side of it. That is one more reason the shape of the day is worth setting before you fly rather than improvising it from the beach.
Bitter Guana Cay and the Iguanas
A Protected Species
A few cays south, Bitter Guana Cay has a population of Northern Bahamian rock iguanas on a pale sand beach under white cliffs. They are an endangered species and a protected one, which is worth knowing before anybody arrives with a bag of lettuce.
It is a quieter stop than the pigs and it is usually the one people remember as the surprise of the day. Boats run down to it from the same dock and it adds a leg rather than a day.
The Shallow Plane Wreck
Six Feet of Water
There is a small aircraft wreck lying in about six feet of water near Staniel Cay, shallow enough that snorkellers and divers are looking at the same thing from different depths and clear enough that you can make out its shape from the surface.
It is not the famous one. The Curtiss C-46 that everybody photographs sits much further north, off Norman's Cay, and it is a different trip on a different day. Guests who want that one specifically should say so at the enquiry, because it changes where the boat goes.
Pipe Creek and the Sandbars
Between the Cays
Pipe Creek is the run of shallow water and small cays north of Staniel Cay, and it is the stretch you have already flown over on the way in. From the seat it reads as a pale channel threading between islands.
From a boat it is a series of sandbars that dry out and disappear with the tide. This is where a picnic on a sandbar actually happens, and it is arranged with the flight because the bar that is dry at eleven is underwater at three. See a beach picnic for how that is set up.
Onward Down the Chain by Small Plane
Same Aircraft
Big Major Cay works as one stop on a longer trip rather than only as a day out, and clearing customs on the way in is what makes that easy: once you are through the desk, every leg after it is domestic. The same airframe carries on to Exuma, Nassau, Harbour Island or Andros.
That is what turns one beach into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Where the next island has no strip of its own, that leg switches aircraft rather than cancelling the plan. The packaged version of a single day is the Big Major Cay getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.
Ready When You Are
Ready to Book a Small Plane Charter 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
Small Plane Flights to Big Major Cay Add-Ons
Tell us which of these you want when you send your dates and they go on the same quote as the flight.
In Detail
Small Plane Miami to Big Major Cay: The Strip, the Border and the Boat
Everything above is the day. What follows is the detail behind it: the strip that is not on the island you are going to, the border stop that comes before it, the flight down the chain and what charter and private actually change about a flight to the Bahamas.
Miami to Big Major Cay by Small Plane: Flying Low Over the Reef and the Flats
A window each on a Miami to Big Major Cay small plane
The crossing is not dead time between two airports. A small plane crosses low enough to see what is under it, so the water is part of the day rather than something to sit through. A small aircraft flies low and slow over the water. You cross the deep blue first, and then the Bahama Bank comes up underneath and stays there: shallow, pale, and banded in a way that makes the depth readable from the seat. The last part of the run is the best part of it. The Exuma chain arrives underneath in a long broken line of green and white, with Pipe Creek threading between the cays and sandbars drying out of the shallows on either side. From the air the whole archipelago reads as one shape, which is something you cannot get from a boat and cannot really photograph from the ground. Every seat is a window seat on an aircraft this size, and the same is true of scenic flights of this size, so nobody watches the crossing over someone's shoulder. Other small plane routes from Miami fly the same way.
Small Plane to Big Major Cay from Miami: You Decide the Departure Time
Your hour, your names and a small plane 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. 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.
Small Plane Charter to Big Major Cay from Miami: The Crew Files Both Borders, You Carry a Passport
Passports are all your party carries on a Big Major Cay crossing
A small plane from Miami to Big Major Cay crosses an international border twice in a day. 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. 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 None, 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.
Small Plane Miami Big Major Cay: Milestone Days and Bahamas Weekends
A day trip, a weekend or a celebration on Big Major Cay
A private small plane 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 small plane Miami Big Major Cay charter is for. Three of the four sit well inside the county, which is the part that decides how early the morning starts: a field twenty minutes from the house is worth more than five minutes of flight time saved in the air. Most people who fly here are marking something, and the date comes first. 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
Small Plane Charter Miami to Big Major Cay: Questions Answered
Can a plane land on Big Major Cay?
No, and nothing will ever be built there. The island is uninhabited and has no runway of any kind. The strip that serves it is Staniel Cay Airport, identifier MYES, 3,031 feet of asphalt about 1.28 miles north across the water.
A small plane lands there and a boat covers the last mile in five to ten minutes. A seaplane is the only aircraft that reaches the beach itself.
Where is Big Major Cay Bahamas?
In the Exuma Cays, roughly 80 miles southeast of Nassau and about 259 miles from Miami. It sits immediately next to Staniel Cay, which is the transport hub for this stretch of the chain and the reason the island is reachable at all.
The Exumas run for more than a hundred miles as a broken line of small cays, and Big Major Cay is one of the ones near the middle of it.
What is on Big Major Cay?
A beach, scrub, three freshwater springs and the pigs. That is genuinely the list. There is no hotel, no restaurant, no dock and nobody living there, which is most of the appeal: you arrive by boat over sand, you are on an uninhabited island in the Exumas, and there is nothing between you and the water. Anything you want on the day travels with you or is arranged with the flight.
How did the Bahamas Pigs arrive on Big Major Cay?
Honestly, nobody knows. Several stories circulate, most involving sailors who left them and never came back, and none of them has a documented source behind it. The pigs have been there for decades, they swim out to meet boats, and the island took its nickname from them. We would rather tell you the account is unverified than repeat a legend as though it were history.
Do I need a passport to fly to Big Major Cay?
Yes, for every passenger including children. The Bahamas is a different country and a private aircraft does not change that. We take the passport details once at the enquiry and file the manifest for both sides before departure. The travel documents page lists what each passenger hands over and by when, including the cases that need more notice, such as non-United States passports and residence cards.
How long is the flight from Miami to Big Major Cay?
The route runs about 259 miles and it is not a straight shot, because the aircraft has to clear Bahamian customs at an airport of entry before carrying on into the Exumas.
Block time depends on the aircraft, the departure field and which customs stop the crew uses, and it is confirmed with the boarding time before you book. Add five to ten minutes of boat at the far end.
Where does the flight land for Big Major Cay?
At Staniel Cay, on a 3,031-foot asphalt strip running 17/35 across the island. It is the closest runway to Big Major Cay by a wide margin. From the apron it is a short ride to the water and then five to ten minutes across to Pig Beach. The boat is arranged with the flight rather than found on arrival, so it is waiting when you land.
Can you take a day trip to Big Major Cay?
Yes, and it is the most common way this route is flown. On a charter the aircraft is held for your block, so the return is set by you rather than by a timetable.
The limit is daylight rather than a schedule: these strips work from half an hour after sunrise to half an hour before sunset, so an early departure buys noticeably more island. Overnight trips are planned the same way.
What is the best way to get to Big Major Cay?
By air, and then it depends on whether you mind a boat. A small plane lands on the paved strip at Staniel Cay and you cross the last mile by water, which is dependable on mornings a water landing would not be.
A seaplane sets down off the beach and skips the boat entirely. Going by boat from Nassau costs most of the day. We quote the first two against each other.
How much baggage can we take on a small plane?
It is a weight question rather than a bag count. A small aircraft trades payload against passengers and fuel, so four guests with dive gear and four with day bags are different aircraft. This is where wheels beat floats, because a wheeled airframe has more payload to give. Say what is coming at the enquiry, including coolers, camera cases and anything with a battery in it.
Is Big Major Cay good for families?
It suits families unusually well. The water off the beach is shallow and calm, the pigs are the reason most children want to come in the first place, and the boat leg is short enough not to become an ordeal. Children need passports like everybody else. On a private aircraft there is no terminal and no queue, which is usually the part that makes the difference with small children.
Can we see the other cays on the same day?
Yes, and most parties do, because the boat is already out. Compass Cay is about eight minutes away and has nurse sharks at the marina dock, Thunderball Grotto sits off Staniel Cay and is snorkelled at slack water, and Bitter Guana Cay has the protected rock iguanas. Tell us at the enquiry what you want to see and the boat time is planned around it rather than squeezed in.
Can I bring a pet on a small plane 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 Small Plane Charter Miami to Big Major Cay?
Send the departure point, the number of guests and from when to when. You get back the aircraft, the boarding time and what the whole day costs, before anything is booked.
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