Small Plane from Miami to Jacksonville

Jacksonville Executive at Craig sits on the east side of the city, eight miles from downtown, and it is the field a charter uses rather than the big one northwest of town. Two asphalt strips, 5/23 at 4,004 feet and 14/32 at 4,008 feet, with a tower and a general aviation ramp. From the seat it is an ordinary landing and from the apron it is a short walk. There is no concourse and no baggage hall, so the car that was booked with the flight is standing where the aircraft parks. Ground transport covers both ends of the day. Herlong Recreational, southwest of the centre, is the alternative when the plan sits on that side of the river. Two asphalt strips of 4,000 and 3,500 feet, about eight nautical miles out. Which field the crew files for follows where you are actually going.

The St. Johns River runs straight through the middle of the city and the Riverwalk runs along both banks of it, so downtown reads as a waterfront, not as a grid. Eight miles from the ramp, so it is the default first stop on a day trip. West of the bridges are Riverside and Avondale, the older residential quarters, with the Cummer Museum and its gardens on the water. The museum holds more than 5,000 works and the gardens run to the river. On a Saturday the Riverside Arts Market sets up under the Fuller Warren Bridge between ten and three. The city covers 747 square miles, the largest by area in the contiguous United States, which explains the driving. Nothing is walkable to everything else, so the car matters more than in a smaller place. The Jacksonville destination page covers the city properly.

More than twenty-two miles of Atlantic beach sit east of the field, and the three towns along it run into each other: Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach. From Craig it is about sixteen miles, which is twenty minutes and no ferry. North of them the St. Johns finally meets the ocean at Mayport, about fifteen miles from downtown. The river is 310 miles long, the longest in Florida and one of the few in the country that flows north, and the mouth is the part you see from the air on the way in. Between the beaches and the river sits the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, 46,000 acres under the National Park Service, with Fort Caroline and the Kingsley Plantation inside it. It is the reason this stretch of coast still has marsh on it rather than seawall.

Ponte Vedra Beach is seventeen miles south of the field and it is the reason a good share of these charters get booked at all. TPC Sawgrass is there, and the island green at the seventeenth is 137 yards of par three with water on every side of it. The course has hosted the PLAYERS Championship since 1982, so the hole is recognisable to people who have never stood on it. Booking a tee time is your side of the arrangement. Getting four people and four sets of clubs there in time for a morning start without losing a day to the interstate is ours. Clubs travel on weight rather than on bag count, and a wheeled airframe has more of it to give than floats do. Say what is coming at the enquiry and see the baggage guidance for how the trade between passengers and weight actually works.

St. Augustine was founded in 1565 and is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement of European origin in the United States, which is a mouthful and also the whole point of going. Thirty-seven miles from Craig, so it is an afternoon rather than a separate trip. Parties who want the old town as the main event often fly in to Craig, drive south and come back to the same apron in the evening. It is the sort of plan that works because the aircraft waits for you , and a Jacksonville day can be built around it.

Amelia Island is thirteen miles of barrier island at the top of the state, about twenty-six miles north of the field. Fernandina Beach sits at its northern end and its historic district covers more than fifty blocks. More than 400 of the buildings in it are on the National Register, so the main street looks the way it does rather than like the rest of the coast. It is the usual choice when the trip is a weekend rather than a day, and the drive up from Craig is the shortest way in.

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 bags, rods, camera cases, a box of samples for a meeting downtown, 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.

Jacksonville works as one leg of a longer plan rather than only as an end point, and because the whole route stays inside Florida the aircraft can pick up and put down as the week needs it. The same airframe runs the coast south to Daytona Beach, Melbourne, Vero Beach, Stuart and West Palm Beach, or inland to Orlando. The full list is on the Florida destinations page. Where the plan wants a dock rather than a ramp, that leg switches aircraft instead of cancelling: the same trip by seaplane onto the river. The packaged version of a single day is the Jacksonville getaway day trip.