Small Plane from Miami to Nassau

Lynden Pindling International has two asphalt runways, 14/32 at about 11,000 feet and a second of about 8,300, and it is open around the clock. From the seat it is an ordinary landing, because a small small plane uses a fraction of either. Immigration and customs are inside the terminal, which is the fact that shapes this whole route: Nassau is a port of entry, so you clear where you land rather than somewhere along the way. On islands without one an aircraft has to touch down at a port of entry first and carry on afterwards. Expect the formalities to take minutes rather than an hour. The crew has filed everything before departure. 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.

This is the step that separates Nassau from every small cay in this country. The link between the runway and the harbour is a road, so there is no ferry, no tide and no crossing that gets cancelled. The route runs east along the northern shore, past Cable Beach and the big resort strip, into downtown and the harbour front. Two bridges carry on across to Paradise Island from there. Nothing about it depends on the weather, so a winter morning that would close a water landing changes nothing here. It is also why groups arriving for one date pick this island. Everybody lands at the same field, everybody gets in the same cars and the day starts on the road rather than at a dock.

Two bridges arch across the harbour between New Providence and Paradise Island, one for each direction, and every arrival by air ends on one of them. The drive from the apron is about half an hour, longer when the harbour road is busy in the middle of the day. It is worth knowing before you book rather than after. This is not a taxi to the door: the flight ends at an airport on another island, and the last piece is a road. A car waiting on the apron when the door opens is arranged with the flight as ground transport rather than found on arrival. What there is to do once you are over the bridge is the island's own subject rather than the flight's, and the Nassau destination page covers it.

Atlantis is not one hotel. The Royal is the pair of pink towers everybody pictures, the Cove and the Reef are the quieter towers at the western end, the Coral sits between them, Harborside is the villas on the harbour side and the Ocean Club is the separate, older property along the beach. Which one you are checking into changes the drive by minutes rather than by much, but it changes what the day looks like once you are there. Tell us the house at the enquiry and the car goes to that entrance rather than to the main one. What each of them is like is the resort's own subject rather than the flight's, and the Atlantis destination page covers it.

The resort sits on Cable Beach, east of the airport. The property puts the drive at ten minutes and most visitors report twelve to fifteen, depending on how the Cable Beach strip is moving. A car on the ramp through ground transport turns the whole thing into one movement rather than two. The property runs to about a thousand acres and carries three hotels holding more than 2,200 rooms between them, which is the part that matters for a group: the rooms, the restaurants, the water and the golf all sit inside one boundary and nobody has to organise transport between them. What there is to do on the grounds is the resort's own subject rather than the flight's, and the Baha Mar destination page covers it properly. 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.

The old town is small and walkable. Parliament Square, built in 1815 and still the seat of government, sits a few minutes from the waterfront with the Queen Victoria statue that was put up in 1905 in front of it. Fort Fincastle and the Queen’s Staircase are the short climb behind the town, and Fort Charlotte stands about a mile west of downtown, close enough to walk from the harbour. Potter’s Cay, under the bridge to Paradise Island, and Arawak Cay on the western side are where the fish fry stalls are and where most people eat conch.

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.

Nassau 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 Lynden Pindling, every leg after it is domestic. The Exumas start about forty miles to the southeast and Staniel Cay is roughly eighty, which is half an hour in the air rather than the two to three hours the same trip takes by boat. Harbour Island is reached through North Eleuthera in about the same, and Andros with its barrier reef lies to the west. 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 Nassau day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.