Small Plane Flights from Miami to Little San Salvador

The field sits just outside the settlement of Rock Sound at the southern end of Eleuthera. Runway 09/27, 7,215 feet of asphalt, which is a great deal more than this aircraft needs and enough for most of what else comes through here.

It is an airport of entry, so customs and immigration are in the building beside the apron. The crew has filed everything before departure, so expect the formalities to take minutes rather than an hour. The desk keeps daylight hours, and that is the one reason an early slot is worth more than a late one on this route.

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. A vehicle can be waiting at the apron when you land through ground transport.

This is the other way in, and the crew picks New Bight or Rock Sound on the day. New Bight runs 09/27 with 5,049 feet of asphalt, on the west coast of Cat Island, 31 nautical miles southeast of Little San Salvador.

It is the quieter of the two by some margin, and it is the right choice when the day is built around Cat Island itself not around Eleuthera.

Customs there closes at official sunset, which the crew plans around when it picks between the two fields. A trip that starts here and ends here is a different shape of day, and it has its own page under Miami to Cat Island by small plane.

This is the part no runway shortens. From either field it is a short ride to the water and then a boat out across open sea, 23 nautical miles from the Eleuthera side and 31 from Cat Island.

That leg is arranged with the flight rather than found on the dock when you get there, and it is quoted with everything else. How long it takes depends on the boat and the day, so the honest version of this trip starts early.

Guests who would rather not do it at all fly the same route by seaplane into Half Moon Bay 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.

Because the runway is on Eleuthera, the land part of this day is Eleuthera by default, and that is not a consolation prize. Rock Sound has the Ocean Hole on its southern edge, an inland blue hole of brackish water with ladders down into it and angelfish, snapper and blue tangs in it that people feed from the rim.

The island narrows to almost nothing south of the settlement, so both coasts are minutes apart: Atlantic on one side, bank water on the other, and long beaches on either that stay empty on a weekday. The Eleuthera destination page covers the island properly rather than in passing.

Guests who want a table booked before they land add a fly and dine day and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

If the flight lands at New Bight instead, the walk up Mount Alvernia is twenty minutes from the apron. Locally it is Como Hill, and at 206 feet it is the highest point in the whole of the Bahamas, which says something about the country rather than about the hill.

On top of it stands the Hermitage, a stone monastery built by hand in 1939 by a priest who had already built churches across the islands. It is roughly the size of a garden shed, with a chapel, a cell and a bell tower, and the stairway up is cut into the rock. From the summit you can see both coasts of Cat Island at once.

The cay is about four square miles and roughly two per cent of it is built on. The rest is scrub, beach and a shallow brackish lagoon in the middle that the Bahamas National Trust lists as a wetland worth protecting. The whole island is a wild bird preserve.

From a small plane at the height these approaches are flown, the lagoon reads as a pale eye in the middle of the green, with the crescent of sand on the western side and the darker line of the drop-off beyond it. That is the view this route buys, and on a clear morning it is worth asking the crew for the pass rather than the direct line 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, especially on a crossing that carries this much fuel.

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 asphalt, and that is island logistics rather than a charter with extra bags.

Once you are through the desk at Rock Sound or New Bight you are into the Bahamas, and every leg after that is domestic. That is what turns this crossing into the first morning of a week rather than a single day out. The same airframe carries on to Harbour Island at the top of Eleuthera, Nassau, Staniel Cay and the Exumas, Andros or Grand Bahama.

That is what makes island hopping or a wider Bahamas day straightforward from here. Where the next island has no strip either, that leg switches aircraft rather than cancelling the plan. The packaged version of a single day is the Little San Salvador getaway and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.