Bahamas bound!
“I’ve got to fly to St. Somewhere...”
Atop my bucket list for years: “Fly to the Bahamas.” In March, I finally scratched that off the list. Now, I can’t wait to do it again.
My wife Stacy, younger son Sam and I spent the first half of spring break in St. Petersburg, Florida, where Sam’s high school baseball team went 4-1 against opponents who’d escaped from all over the North to play ball in the Florida sun. Next up, after shipping Sam’s baseball gear home to Houston, was a long weekend in the Bahamas with a large group of kids (and their parents) from Sam’s school celebrating the impending end of their senior year in a place where 18-year-olds can legally drink and gamble. Ridiculous, but entertaining. But first, we had to get there.
A small plane flight from the U.S. to the Bahamas is just like any other small plane flight, with two important exceptions: (1) the international border crossing and (2) it’s an extended flight over water. There’s a wealth of on-line and other resources to help with both these challenges. I started with AOPA’s Pilot Guide to the Bahamas. At 228 pages and covering 56 airports on 15 different Bahamian islands and archipelagos, it was overkill for our one-stop flight to Nassau, the largest Bahamas airport. For color, I attended a great presentation by Jim Parker of Caribbean Flying Adventures at last fall’s PMOPA Convention, and found a webinar by CST Flight Services on flying to the Bahamas. (You can hire either of these companies to handle everything for you, if you choose.) Every so often, the FAASTeam will host a webinar where officials from the general aviation section of U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) answer questions about flying across the border. I also stumbled on (no one else had mentioned) CBP’s collection of General Aviation Airport Fact Sheets. These gems provide airport-specific procedures for international arrivals and departures. Finally, the Bahamas Customs Department has a great website, with video tutorials for inbound and outbound declarations.
CBP Airport Fact Sheet
Water crossing. Once I’d reached information saturation, the first step was acquiring the physical items required and/or prudent for the water crossing. The flight from Tampa Bay’s Peter Knight Airport (TPF) to Nassau (MYNN) is far enough over the water (50nm from shore) that it requires (per 14 CFR 91.509) carrying life preservers, but not far enough (100nm from shore) that it requires a life raft. Given the miniscule chances we’d need them and the confines of the cabin, I opted for unobtrusive, but effective, belt-pack life vests. Although not required, with my life-vest I packed an LED rescue strobe. And I packed my Garmin InReach Mini 2 — this tiny device provides satellite-based (Iridium) texting and emergency response connectivity anywhere you can see the sky.
Garmin InReach Mini 2
Belt Pack Life Vest
U.S. government departure requirements. Next up, satisfying Uncle Sam. Any private plane crossing a U.S. border requires an annual CBP decal, available by mail from CBP for $35/year on 30 days notice. International departures and arrivals also require an account with, and filings on, eAPIS (Electronic Advance Passenger Information System). Outbound, the filing of a Notice of Departure (containing crew, passenger, route, and timing information) will generate an email to you from CBP granting your departure clearance. One eAPIS idiosyncrasy worth noting on outbound filings: if you’re not departing from an airport with a CBP office, the form requires answering the “departure airport” question with the nearest official “CBP Airport”, and noting your actual departure airport in response to a separate question asking for “departure location description.” AOPA has a good FAQ about eAPIS. So, we listed Tampa International (TPA) as our “CBP Airport” and our actual departure point, Peter O. Knight Airport (TPF) separately. File an international flight plan (IFR or VFR), and you’re good to go.
Tampa to Nassau. The flight couldn’t have gone smoother. About 45 minutes after we took off from Peter Knight Airport in Tampa, we (coincidentally) overflew Mar-a-Lago at 15,000’ and headed out across the Gulf Stream. Our IFR flight plan took us about halfway between Bimini and Freeport, and we were never out of sight of land. At 15,000’ in the Malibu, we had 25+nm of glide range (the green ring around the plane, above), enough to get us close to land from anywhere along our flight path in the event of an emergency. Although the weather was CAVU, I filed IFR for the guidance. (If going VFR, activate your flight plan before leaving Florida.) Miami Center eventually handed us off to Nassau Approach, who had us skirt north and east of the Berry Islands before lining us up for Runway 10 at Nassau. The scenery along the way was magnificent, particularly where the turquoise shallows of the Great Bahama Bank meet what’s called the Tongue of the Ocean (TOTO), the region of much deeper water between the islands of Andros and New Providence (the island on which Nassau is the capital).
Bahamas entry requirements. The Bahamas government makes life easy on private pilots. Land first at an Airport of Entry (labeled “AoE” on sectionals/Foreflight or list here). Give Bahamas Customs three completed copies of Form C7A (Inward Declaration and Cruising Permit). You’ll get one back stamped, and that’s your Cruise Permit — a license to go land anywhere else in the Bahamas without further paperwork. Of course, it’s always a good idea to call ahead and ask the folks at your destination if there are any quirks. At Lynden Pindling Int’l Airport in Nassau, FBO Odyssey Aviation asked us to email a copy of our eAPIS filing ahead of time, which they used to complete both our inward declaration and immigration forms for us before our arrival. I recommend Odyssey at Nassau — they had us through customs and out of the FBO in ten minutes, tops.
Bahamas Form C7A
We quickly segued from flying to soaking up sun on the beach, eating conch fritters and tossing back Sands beer and banana daquiris. Lots of highlights, including teaching Sam and his friends how to play craps. After three quick days of island life, it was time to head home. I’d drop Stacy and Sam at Ft. Lauderdale International (FLL), where they’d catch a Southwest flight home to Houston, while I went to check in on our older son, a junior at the University of Miami.
Leaving the Bahamas and entering the U.S. You’re required to depart the Bahamas from an AoE, where you turn in your immigration receipt to Customs and pay the departure taxes. Odyssey rolled that and our outrageously (but understandably) priced avgas into one invoice.
Entering the U.S. requires more effort than leaving it. In addition to filing an eAPIS with your arrival information, you must call the CBP office at your airport of intended landing (which must be a U.S. airport of entry) at least one hour before arriving. Your email confirmation provides a +/- 60-minute clearance window for you to land there.
I had filed an IFR flight plan from Nassau to Ft. Lauderdale, again just for the structure. Unfortunately, we sat on the taxiway for more than 30 minutes waiting for a departure clearance, with Nassau Clearance advising that “Miami wasn’t picking up the phone” so they couldn’t clear us out. When our U.S. arrival window (+/- 60 minutes) appeared in jeopardy, I asked to depart VFR (it was a beautiful day, as it usually is in the Bahamas), and was immediately cleared for takeoff. Nassau Approach handed us off to Miami Center, who activated our IFR flight plan and provided an IFR squawk code long before the point it was required (it’s required 15 minutes before crossing the U.S. Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), or just west of Bimini).
Flight track, Nassau to Ft. Lauderdale
Our route took us along South West Bay as we departed New Providence, then directly over North Andros and Bimini, then straight in to Ft. Lauderdale International.
The airport was wildly busy with 737 traffic, generating a “keep your speed up” request from the tower controller as we approached. On landing, as required, we taxied directly to U.S. Customs, which at FLL is co-located with the Sheltair FBO. No one marshalled us in, and I parked in what appeared to be the most obvious spot, at the end of a line of other planes. No sooner had we deplaned than a uniformed Customs official quickly walked up to advise us we were improperly parked on the “domestic” side of the FBO, as we hadn’t cleared U.S. Customs yet. The “international” side was about 20 feet away, on the other side of a faded, unmarked yellow stripe of paint. I obviously appeared crestfallen, because he asked, “Is this your first time?” When I admitted it was, he offered “just this once” to allow it. We hustled inside, showed our passports, had our bags scanned, paid the $22 in customs and landing fees, and voilà, we were back in the United States.
Flying to the islands was two of my favorite worlds colliding, and I can’t wait to do it again. That said, I’ve been told I still haven’t had the quintessential small-plane-to-the-Bahamas experience. That flying to Nassau for a long weekend and back just doesn’t count, like taking the ferry from Gibraltar to Tangier for the day and claiming to have been to Africa. I suppose as fun as flying there was, Nassau still runs afoul of Jimmy Buffett’s credo, “I don’t want to swim in a roped-off sea.” Apparently, until I’ve landed on a secluded wisp of idyllic Bahamian sand sporting only a runway and a beach, I’m not in the club. If true, that’s what the next trip’s for.
