Small Plane Flights from Miami to Dunmore Town

The strip runs 07/25 across the top of the mainland, 6,020 feet of asphalt with water at both ends. From the air it looks like a line drawn on scrub and from the seat it is an ordinary landing, because a small plane needs a fraction of it.

The terminal is one low building. Customs and immigration are inside it, which is the fact that shapes this whole route: North Eleuthera is an airport of entry with both desks staffed, 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 desks keep 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 town is on the island across a channel a few hundred yards wide, and the link is a taxi of a few minutes from the apron down to the dock, then a water taxi of about the same again.

It runs through the day, it is informal about it, 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 Dunmore 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.

The boat ties up at Government Dock, which is the middle of the waterfront rather than the outskirts of anything. You are in the town the moment you step off, with your luggage, and that is the practical difference between arriving here and arriving at a gate.

Carts are for hire within sight of the dock, because the settlement runs on golf carts and very little else. A cart waiting when the boat comes in is arranged with the flight rather than on the day, through ground transport, and so is a transfer straight to a house or a hotel.

Behind the waterfront the town is a grid of clapboard houses laid out by loyalist settlers in the eighteenth century, and it has kept the shape: narrow lanes running back from the water, picket fences, bougainvillea over the walls and a colour on every door. It is about a mile end to end, so the whole of it is walkable in an afternoon.

Colebrook Street runs east towards Sunset Dock and the Wall of License Plates, the old Loyalist Cottage sits above the harbour looking across at the mainland you flew over an hour earlier, and the fish fry along the bay side is where the town eats in the evening.

The sheltered water between the island and the mainland is the reason the town exists, and two marinas sit on it. Between them they take yachts up to about 160 feet for most of the year, so the channel is full of masts and why a flight in here often meets a boat.

That combination is the most common shape of an enquiry on this route: guests flying in to join a yacht, or crew and provisions flying out to meet one. A transfer from the apron straight to a tender is arranged with the flight, and anything larger than luggage rides the same runway under island logistics.

The far side of the island is one long beach, roughly three miles of it, and it is the reason most first-time visitors come. From the dock it is a few minutes across by cart, which is the whole width of the island. Riding along it is the local version of a walk and it is booked on the island rather than with us.

What there is to do once you are across is the destination's own subject rather than the flight's, and the island page covers it properly. Guests who want a table held before they land add a fly and dine day, and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

The water off the top of the island is shallow, clear and broken up by coral heads, which makes it unusually forgiving for a first dive. Split Reef is a single large head sitting on open sand, High Head runs between about ten and fifty feet, and the reefs further along hold turtles and moray eels.

Ten to fifty feet is shallow enough that snorkellers and divers are looking at the same thing from different depths. Boats run out from the harbour side, and tanks are a weight question on the way over rather than a problem, which is the argument for wheels on this crossing.

Dunmore Town works as the first leg rather than the whole trip, and clearing in here is what makes that easy: once you are through the desk at North Eleuthera, every leg after it is domestic. The same airframe carries on down the island and across the bank to Nassau, Grand Bahama, 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 Dunmore Town getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.