Small Plane from Miami to Bimini

The strip runs east to west across the bottom of South Bimini, 5,430 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 a small small plane needs a fraction of it. The terminal is one building with customs and immigration inside it, which shapes this whole route: South Bimini Airport is a port of entry, so you clear where you land. Expect the formalities to take minutes rather than an hour. The crew has filed everything before departure and the desk keeps daytime hours, so an early slot is worth more than a late one. Say at the enquiry if anyone travels on a passport other than a United States one, worth flagging before the day.

The south island is the residential one. Low scrub, a few roads, houses and the airport and almost none of the bars and hotels people picture when they hear the name. That is not a drawback for a day trip, it is the reason the arrival is calm. There is no crowd at the strip and no queue for the boat. The nature trail and the fresh water spring on this side are a short ride from the apron for anybody who would rather not cross at all and a golf cart can be waiting when you land through ground transport. The shark research station on the south shore is a working field station that has studied sharks in these waters since the 1990s, so a visit is booked with them and runs to their calendar. Port Royal, next to Bimini Sands, has holiday homes, a beach club, restaurants and a dive base. Bimini Sands has the marina, the villas and a nature trail of about a mile through the undeveloped middle of the island, home to the endangered Bimini boa, a snake found nowhere else that grows to around eight feet. Beside the airport road stands the limestone well known as the Fountain of Youth, a ten minute stop on the way in from the strip.

The two islands are separated by a channel with no bridge and the link is a taxi of five to ten minutes from the apron to the dock, then a ferry of about the same again. It runs through the day, it is informal and it is the one genuine extra step this aircraft has that a water landing does not. It is also the step that buys you a paved runway, which is the better trade on a winter morning or with a load on board. Guests who would rather not do it at all fly the same route by seaplane to Alice Town instead. We quote both against each other rather than selling one, because which is right depends on the date, the water and what the party is carrying.

Across the channel the island is seven miles of sand with one road down the middle. The resort strip and the big marinas sit at the north end, the older game fishing club and the bars of Alice Town along King's Highway and the ocean-side beaches a few minutes apart from either. Nothing on that island is far from anything else, so a day here works and a day further down the chain does not. Golf cart is the transport and walking is the alternative. What there is to do once you are across is the island's own subject rather than the flight's and the Bimini destination page covers it properly. Guests who want a table booked before they land add a fly and dine day and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

The wreck of the Sapona, a concrete ship left standing where she grounded, sits in about fifteen feet of water off the south end of the island. That is the end you land on, which makes it the closest thing on Bimini to the runway. Fifteen feet is shallow enough that snorkellers and divers are looking at the same thing from different depths and the hull stands clear of the surface, so you see it from the air on the way in. Boats run out to it from both islands.

Swimming with nurse sharks and stingrays is the reason most guests fly a small plane to Bimini. Honeymoon Harbour, a few minutes south of the strip, is the beach where tame rays come in shin deep over pale sand, and nurse sharks come into the same shallows. Cat Cay is on the same Bahamian ports of entry list as South Bimini Airport, which is worth knowing if a trip is built around the club not around Bimini. It is a private club: the marina and the houses are for members and their sponsored guests, so for everyone else it is a stop seen from the water rather than a place to book into.

This is the part of the day a runway changes most. Load on a small aircraft is a weight question rather than a bag count and a wheeled airframe has more of it to give than floats do. Golf clubs, dive tanks, rods, a cooler for the boat, a case of something for the house: all of it travels, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. Say what is coming at the enquiry rather than at the ramp and see the baggage guidance for how the trade between passengers and weight actually works. Anything larger than luggage is a different service on the same runway and that is island logistics rather than a charter with extra bags.

Bimini works as the first leg rather than the whole day and clearing in here is what makes that easy: once you are through the desk at South Bimini, every leg after it is domestic. The same airframe carries on east and south to Grand Bahama, Nassau, Harbour Island, Andros or Staniel Cay and the Exumas. That is what turns one island 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 Bimini getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.