Small Plane Flights from Miami to Mangrove Cay

Clarence A. Bain Airport runs east to west across the island, 5,000 feet of asphalt at nineteen feet above the sea. From the air it looks like a line drawn through scrub and from the seat it is an ordinary landing, because a small plane uses a fraction of it.

The terminal is one building and the apron is a few steps from the road. There is no queue, no carousel and nobody selling anything, which is the part guests remember after a connection through a larger airport.

It is not a border post, so nothing official happens here: that was done on the way in. What happens here is that the doors open, the bags come out and whatever you arranged through ground transport is already waiting beside the fence.

Mangrove Cay is not on the Bahamian ports of entry list, so the aircraft comes down at one first. On Andros that means Fresh Creek or Congo Town, and on some routings another designated field altogether, and which one your flight uses is decided on the day.

It costs minutes. The crew files the manifest before you leave Florida, the desk keeps daytime hours and the paperwork is walked for you. Guests hand over a passport and get it back, and the aircraft is airborne again for the last short leg across the bight.

It is worth knowing about because it is the one thing that makes an early start 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, and see the travel documents page for what we need and by when.

A single road runs the length of the island from Moxey Town in the north east corner, past the airstrip, down to Lisbon Creek at the southern tip. Moxey Town is the main settlement and locals call it Little Harbour.

Fewer than a thousand people live in the district. Mains electricity and a paved road only reached these settlements in 1989, and sponging is still a real part of how the place earns a living rather than a museum piece.

That is the character of the island and it is why people who have been to Nassau come here instead. What there is to do once you are on the ground is the island's own subject rather than the flight's, and the Mangrove Cay destination page covers it properly.

Andros is the largest island in the Bahamas and it is not really one island. Wide tidal channels called bights cut it into pieces, and Mangrove Cay is the district between the Middle Bight and the South Bight.

There is no bridge and no road across either of them. From the north you arrive by boat or by air, and from the south a free government ferry crosses the South Bight from Driggs Hill to Lisbon Creek twice a day, taking about half an hour.

You see all of this on the way in and it explains itself instantly from a few thousand feet: the land breaks up into channels and flats and mangrove, and the strip is the only hard surface in the middle of it.

Andros is called the bonefish capital of the world, and the flats systems in the bights on either side of Mangrove Cay are among the largest anywhere. This is the reason a large share of the traffic to this strip exists at all. A fishing party travels differently from a beach party.

Rods, wading boots, packs and a cooler are weight rather than luggage, and a wheeled aircraft has more payload 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.

The day also runs on the tide rather than on the clock, which is exactly the kind of schedule a charter suits and a scheduled seat does not. The packaged version of the same idea is a flats fishing day.

Andros has more than 180 blue holes, inland and along the shore, which is the highest concentration of them anywhere in the world. Some are a walk from a road and some are a boat ride offshore. From the air they read as dark circles punched into pale water, and on the approach you pass over several without being told.

It is the sort of thing that only makes sense from a small aircraft flying low, which is half the argument for this type on this route. Diving and snorkelling them is arranged locally rather than by us, and anything you want set up before you land goes on the enquiry alongside the add-ons.

The Andros barrier reef runs 190 miles down the east side of the island and is the third largest in the world. Beyond it the sea floor falls away into the Tongue of the Ocean, so the colour change out there is so abrupt.

Marine parks protect around 8,500 acres of the reef, and the West Side National Park on the far shore covers roughly 1.5 million acres.

Very little of either has anything built on it. You cross the reef line on the way in whichever field you clear at, and on a clear morning it is the single best minute of the flight. That is why we fly scenic routes on this aircraft rather than on something larger.

Mangrove Cay works as one leg of a longer trip as easily as it works as a day, and clearing in on the way here is what makes that simple: once you are through the desk, every leg after it is domestic. The same airframe carries on to Nassau, Staniel Cay and the Exumas, Harbour Island or Grand Bahama.

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 Mangrove Cay getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.