Small Plane from Miami to Chub Cay

The strip runs 11/29 across the island, 5,000 feet of bitumen with water at both ends. From the air it looks improbably short against all that blue and from the seat it is an ordinary landing, because a small plane needs a fraction of it. The terminal is one building. Customs and immigration are inside it, which is the fact that shapes this whole route: Chub Cay is a designated airport of entry, so you clear where you land rather than somewhere along the way. 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.

This is the part that makes Chub Cay unusual. On most out islands the runway is on one cay and the water you came for is on another, so the day has a taxi and a boat built into it. Here the marina sits on the same island as the strip, a short road apart. For a day trip that difference is worth more than flight time. A morning arrival is on a boat or in the water before the day has properly started, and the same closeness works in reverse in the evening, when the walk back to the aircraft is minutes rather than a connection. A cart or a car can be waiting at the apron through ground transport.

Chub Cay sits on the southern edge of the Great Bahama Bank, and just beyond it the bottom falls away into the Tongue of the Ocean, a trench that runs to around six thousand feet. You see the transition from the aircraft on the way in: shallow turquoise with the bottom visible, then a hard dark line, then nothing but blue. That edge is a few miles from the dock rather than a morning's run, which is the whole reason boats keep a berth here and the reason the island has an airport at all.

Mama Rhoda Rock lies a few hundred yards west of the marina, with staghorn coral in the shallows and eels in the cuts. It is shallow enough that snorkellers and divers are looking at the same thing from different depths. The wider reef starts about five minutes out by boat, with sites from ten feet down to a hundred, and the Chub Cay wall beyond them carries drop-offs, caves and caverns. Tanks and gear travel on the aircraft as a weight question rather than a shape one, which is the practical advantage of arriving on wheels.

North-west of the island the deep trench pushes up against the shallow bank in a corner known as the Pocket. Blue marlin, white marlin, sailfish, tuna, wahoo and mahi-mahi work that edge, so Chub Cay is called the billfish capital of the Bahamas. What that means for the flight is simple: tournament dates and tide windows set the day, not the other way round. Anglers ask for the earliest departure of the morning, and on a charter that is just the hour you name. Rods and tackle ride in the same airframe within the payload for the day, and see the baggage guidance for how the trade between passengers and weight works.

The Berry Islands run north from Chub Cay as a chain of about thirty islands and more than a hundred cays, most of them uninhabited. The census counted 807 residents across the whole chain, which tells you most of what you need to know about how busy it is. Bullocks Harbour on Great Harbour Cay is the main settlement, an hour or so by boat and minutes by air. Great Harbour Cay is the largest island in the chain, about eight miles long, and its named beaches are Sugar Beach, Shelling Beach and Sand Dollar Hill. Hoffman's Cay in between carries a blue hole with a cliff of around twenty feet over the edge, which is the one thing people on this chain photograph more than the water. Two cays in the chain are not open to anybody: Great Stirrup Cay and Little Stirrup Cay, the one the ships call CocoCay, are held by cruise lines, and a number of smaller cays are privately owned and need an invitation from the owner. That is the island's own subject rather than the flight's, and the Chub Cay destination page covers it properly. Anything you want set up before you land, from a table to a boat, goes to custom requests.

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. Rods, dive tanks, 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. Anything larger than luggage is a different service on the same runway, and that is island logistics rather than a charter with extra bags. Provisions, boat parts and freight for the marina move the same way under cargo flights.

Chub Cay 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, every leg after it is domestic. Nassau is about 33 nautical miles to the south east, which is minutes in the air, and the same airframe carries on to Nassau, Andros, Harbour Island, Grand Bahama 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 Chub Cay getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.