Small Plane from Miami to Eleuthera

North Eleuthera carries 6,020 feet of asphalt at the top of the island, Governor's Harbour 8,025 feet in the middle and Rock Sound 7,215 feet in the south. All three are paved, all three are lit for the hours we arrange and all three are far longer than a small small plane asks for. The one that matters is the one nearest your address, because the island is long and thin and the drive between its ends is the part nobody budgets for. We ask where you are staying at the enquiry for exactly that reason. Every one of the three is a Bahamian port of entry, so the desk is at the strip you land on. Expect the formalities to take minutes rather than an hour: the crew has filed everything before departure. Say at the enquiry if anyone travels on a passport other than a United States one, worth flagging before the day.

The northern strip is the busiest of the three and the one most parties want, because it is minutes from the water on both sides. The dock for Harbour Island sits a short ride from the apron and the one for Spanish Wells about the same in the other direction. This is the end of the island with the pink sand, the settlements people have heard of and most of the small hotels. It is also the end that a scheduled routing through Nassau reaches last, which is the practical argument for flying direct. A golf cart or a car can be waiting at the strip when you land, arranged with the flight through ground transport.

Harbour Island is a separate island off the north end and has no runway of its own, so the link from North Eleuthera is a few minutes by road to the dock and roughly ten minutes across the water to Dunmore Town. It runs through the day 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 step off at the dock itself fly the same route by seaplane instead, and what there is to do once across is the island's own subject on the Harbour Island page. We quote both aircraft against each other rather than selling one.

The middle of the island has the longest runway on Eleuthera at 8,025 feet and sits roughly halfway down its length, which makes it the sensible strip for anything between the Glass Window and the south. The settlement itself is the old administrative centre of the island, with the bay on one side and the Atlantic beaches a few minutes across. For parties staying anywhere in the middle third, landing here rather than at the top removes an hour of road at both ends of the day. Anything you want booked before you land is set up with the flight, from a table to a fly and dine day, and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

Rock Sound has 7,215 feet of asphalt and covers the bottom third of the island, including the marina and the resorts around Cape Eleuthera. This is the quiet end. Fewer settlements, longer empty beaches and the ocean holes and blue water that people come down here for rather than for a strip of hotels. It is also the end that a hundred and ten miles of driving separates from the northern airport, which is the whole reason the third runway matters. A yacht lying at the cape is met at the strip and the transfer goes on the same quote as the flight through yacht transfers.

Eleuthera is thin enough in places that the deep Atlantic on one side and the pale bank on the other are visible from the same window. At the Glass Window the gap narrows to about thirty feet of rock with a road across it. Winslow Homer painted the arch here in 1885 and the name stuck. From a small aircraft at low level the colour difference is the whole point: navy on the ocean shoulder, turquoise over the bank, a hard line between them. It is the picture everybody takes on the way in, and on a charter the crew knows to give you the side that has it. That is why we arrange scenic routes on this type rather than on something larger and higher.

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.

The second dock lies a few miles west of the airport and the water taxi from it reaches Spanish Wells in about ten minutes. That is the other reason this strip is busy: two separate island communities are reached from one runway and neither has an airport. Spanish Wells is a working fishing settlement rather than a resort strip, which makes it the quieter half of a day up here. The Spanish Wells page covers what is on it, and a Spanish Wells day is the packaged version of the same trip.

Eleuthera works as one leg of a longer trip rather than only as a destination, and clearing in here is what makes that easy: once you are through the desk, every leg after it is domestic. The same airframe carries on to Nassau, Harbour Island, Andros, 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 Eleuthera getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.