The Crossing
Small Plane Flights Miami to Chub Cay
Chub Cay sits at the bottom of the Berry Islands with a paved runway on it, and that runway is the reason this is one of the simplest crossings we fly.
Chub Cay International Airport carries the identifiers CCZ and MYBC and a strip of 5,000 feet. A small charter plane lands there on wheels, the same as it would at home, and the border desk is on the field.
It is about 133 nautical miles from the Miami shoreline and almost none of that distance has anything on it. You leave Florida behind within a couple of minutes, cross the Gulf Stream and then the Great Bahama Bank opens up underneath in a shallow turquoise you can see the bottom through.
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, 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 from the city and it is the one that puts you closest to deep water. Where an island has no strip at all, the same trip is flown by seaplane instead, which is a different aircraft and a different page.
Plan Your Chub Cay Charter
How It Works
How a Small Plane Charter Miami to Chub Cay Actually Works
Chub Cay is a different country, so a day there is two border crossings in one afternoon. On this route both of them happen at an airport, so it stays simple. Nothing about the paperwork is yours except the passports.
The short version: you clear out of Florida, you land at Chub Cay, you clear in at the desk beside the apron and you are five minutes from the water.
Plan Your Chub Cay CharterThe Runway
The runway at Chub Cay is the reason this works on wheels
The strip runs 11/29 and measures 5,000 feet, laid in bitumen, which is a long way more than a small plane needs. It runs across the middle of Chub Cay with water at both ends and nothing to circle, so a landing here is an ordinary one.
The Border
Customs and immigration sit at the Chub Cay airport, not somewhere on the way
Chub Cay is listed as an airport of entry, which is the part that matters for a private flight. On islands without one an aircraft has to touch down at a port of entry first and carry on afterwards.
Here it does not. You land where the desk is, the crew files the manifest before departure and the travel documents are checked in Florida rather than at the counter.
Leaving Miami
Leaving Miami 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
There is no ferry at this end, which is unusual for a Bahamian out island
The airport, the marina and the beaches sit on the same small island, minutes apart by road. On most out islands the strip is on one cay and the water you came for is on another, with a taxi and a boat in between.
Here the walk from the apron to a dock is short enough that a morning arrival is on the water before the day has really started, and ground transport can be waiting when the door opens.
Weather
Weather closes water before it closes the Chub Cay runway
A rough morning can make a water landing a bad idea while a paved strip is entirely unbothered. That is the practical argument for wheels on this crossing in winter and it is the reason we quote both. What the aircraft needs on the day is a crew decision, taken against published minimums, never a preference.
The Block
The small plane waits, which is what makes a Chub 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. Guests who want a night on the island tell us at the enquiry and the crew and the aircraft are planned around it. Nothing about the day is shared with anybody else's schedule.
Departure Points
Departure Points for Small Plane Flights to Chub 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 Chub Cay
Chartering an aircraft is not booking a seat. There are four steps, and only the first one is yours.
Plan Your Chub 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. Your pickup can also be a marina, a hotel dock or a beach. With a seaplane we can collect you there.
- 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 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 Chub Cay Small Plane Puts You Down
The aircraft puts you on the runway in the middle of Chub Cay, which is the southernmost island of the Berry Islands and one of the few Bahamian out islands where the strip, the border desk and the water are all on the same piece of land. Everything below is minutes from the apron.
What follows is what parties actually do with the hours in between, in the order they ask for it.
Plan Your Chub Cay CharterThe Chub Cay Runway and the Border Desk
Where You LandThe 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, which is the one reason an early slot is worth more than a late one.
Say at the enquiry if anyone is travelling on a passport other than a United States one, because that is the case worth flagging before the day rather than at the counter.
The Marina and the Dock, Minutes From the Apron
No Ferry
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.
The Tongue of the Ocean, Straight Off the South Shore
Deep Water
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 and the Reef
Five Minutes Out
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.
The Pocket and the Billfish Grounds
Why the Boats Come
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.
Great Harbour Cay and the Rest of the Berries
North of Chub
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. 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.
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.
Rods, Tanks and a Cooler on a Small Plane
What Wheels Carry
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.
Onward Down the Chain by Small Plane
Same Aircraft
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.
Ready When You Are
Ready to Book a Small Plane Charter from Miami to Chub 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 Chub 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 Chub Cay: The Bank Crossing, the Strip and the Marina
Everything above is the day. What follows is the detail behind it: the strip at the far end, the border that sits beside it, the deep water off the south shore and what charter and private actually change about a flight to the Bahamas.
Miami to Chub Cay by Small Plane: Flying Low Over the Reef and the Flats
Room enough and a window each on a Chub 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: the Gulf Stream goes from navy to light, then the bank comes up turquoise. The last stretch is the one people photograph. The Berry Islands are a chain of about thirty islands and more than a hundred cays scattered across the top of the bank, and from a few thousand feet you see the whole shape of them at once: sandbars, cuts, and the abrupt dark line where the shallow bank ends and the Tongue of the Ocean drops away to around six thousand feet. Chub Cay is a different country, so a day there is two border crossings in one afternoon. 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 Chub Cay from Miami: You Decide the Departure Time
Your hour, your names and a small plane to Chub 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 Chub 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. Chub Cay is a different country, so a day there is two border crossings in one afternoon. 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 Chub Cay from Miami: The Crew Files Both Borders, You Carry a Passport
Passports are all your party carries on a Chub Cay crossing
A small plane from Miami to Chub 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 Chub Cay: Milestone Days and Bahamas Weekends
A day trip, a weekend or something to celebrate on Chub Cay
A private small plane from Miami to Chub 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 Chub 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. 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 Chub Cay: Questions Answered
Can a plane land on Chub Cay?
Yes. Chub Cay International Airport has a runway of 5,000 feet, identifiers CCZ and MYBC, which is more than a small charter aircraft needs. It is also an airport of entry, so a private flight lands and clears in the same place.
The marina and the beaches are on the same island as the strip, a few minutes away by road, so there is no ferry step at this end.
Where is Chub Cay?
At the southern tip of the Berry Islands, roughly 133 nautical miles from Miami and about 33 from Nassau. The Berries are a chain of around thirty islands and more than a hundred cays sitting on the northern edge of the Great Bahama Bank, with the Tongue of the Ocean dropping away to the south. Chub Cay is the closest of them to the deep water.
Do I need a passport to fly to Chub 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.
How long is the flight from Miami to Chub Cay?
The distance is about 133 nautical miles, so it is a short hop rather than a journey. The block time depends on the aircraft and which field you leave from and it is confirmed with the boarding time before you book.
What actually sets the length of the day is not the flight, it is the two borders and how long the aircraft waits for you on the island.
What is the best way to get to Chub Cay?
By air, and then it depends on the weather and what you are carrying. A small plane lands on the paved runway, which is dependable on days the water is not, and takes rods, tanks and coolers by weight. A seaplane puts you on the water instead. A boat from Florida costs most of a day. We quote the first two against each other rather than selling one.
Where does the flight land on Chub Cay?
At Chub Cay International Airport, on the island itself. Customs and immigration are in the building beside the apron, so you clear on arrival rather than somewhere along the way. From the apron the marina, the dock and the south-shore beaches are minutes by road, which is why this island works as a day trip when larger ones do not.
Can you take a day trip to Chub Cay?
Easily, and it is a 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. Out in the morning, back in the evening, with both borders handled either side. Tell us at the enquiry if you would rather stay a night and the aircraft and crew are planned around that instead.
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 tanks and four with overnight bags are different aircraft. Say what is coming at the enquiry, including rods, coolers and anything with a battery in it, and the answer comes back with the quote rather than at the ramp.
Is Chub Cay good for fishing?
It is what most people come for. The island sits where the Tongue of the Ocean meets the shallow bank, which is the edge blue marlin, white marlin, sailfish, tuna, wahoo and mahi-mahi work, and it is called the billfish capital of the Bahamas for that reason. The flight matters here because tackle travels by weight on wheels and the earliest departure is the one you name.
Is there diving and snorkelling near the Chub Cay runway?
Yes, and it is close. Mama Rhoda Rock lies a few hundred yards west of the marina with staghorn coral in the shallows, and the reef starts about five minutes out, with sites from ten feet down to a hundred. The Chub Cay wall has drop-offs, caves and caverns along it. Dive gear is a weight conversation at the enquiry, not a problem.
Can we fly on to another island from Chub Cay afterwards?
Yes. Once you have cleared into the Bahamas at Chub Cay, every leg after it is domestic, so the same airframe carries on to Nassau, Andros or down the Exuma chain without another border. Great Harbour Cay and the rest of the Berries are minutes away to the north. Tell us the shape of the trip at the enquiry and it is quoted as one movement.
What happens if the weather is bad on the day of the Chub Cay flight?
A paved runway tolerates a great deal that a water landing does not, which is the main practical argument for this aircraft in winter. If conditions are genuinely below minimums the crew moves or stands down the flight and the weather and delays policy says what that means for your booking. That call is the crew's, made against published limits, never a preference.
Where do we stay on Chub Cay?
That is the island's own question rather than the flight's, and the Chub Cay destination page is the right place for it. Tell us at the enquiry whether the day is a day trip or an overnight, because it changes how the aircraft and crew are planned rather than only where you sleep. Anything you want arranged before you land is set up with the flight.
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 Chub 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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