***NOTICE***
As of
September 30, 2007, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
requires that ALL U.S. CITIZENS REGARDLESS OF AGE have and present a valid US Passport when re-entering the
U.S.
This means that
CBP will no longer accept a receipt indicating that you have
applied for a U.S. passport but have not yet received it,
nor will they accept an expired passport.
Since U.S.
Citizens arriving without proper documentation and the
airline transporting them are both subject to
substantial fines and penalties Island Air Charters
will refuse to board any passenger who does not personally
possess the valid, proper documentation specified for
re-entry.
If you have any questions, please see
the CBP website at www.cbp.gov
We recommend
that, if you do not have a valid passport, you take the
necessary steps to obtain one sufficiently in advance of
your travel date, as - in response to this requirement - the
time from applying for a passport and actually receiving it
has substantially increased over the usual 10 day to 2 week
period. In this regard, our Passenger Service Agents will
assist you as best they can.
***NOTICE***
Effective
December 30, 2007, all passengers returning to the
United States on Island Air Charters (or any other air
charter carrier, or private aircraft for that matter) with
the intention of continuing on to another destination via
regular commercial airlines should plan on being delayed for
unspecified time periods at U.S. Customs and Border
Protection facilities. These delays will be due to CBP's
implementation and use of their new GR-135 Radiation Isotope
Identifier Device (RIID) Scanning equipment that will be
used to scan all passenger baggage plus the actual aircraft
for illicit radiological and nuclear materials.
While CBP states
in their notice that the new inspection procedure will only
take an additional 5 to 15 minutes depending on the size of
the aircraft, these estimates are - at best - very
optimistic in ideal conditions only.
Passengers
should know that, since CBP agents will only clear one
aircraft, it's passengers and crew at a time, each aircraft
arriving after the first in a progression will be held up an
additional length of time depending upon the speed with
which the CBP agents on duty will be able to accomplish this
additional task.
Remarkably, CPB
installed and implemented the equipment and policy without
hiring or assigning any additional staff to offset the
task! In the mean time, we all suffer the consequences of
that oversight.
Island Air
Charters is currently tracking the amount of time it takes
to clear each inbound aircraft to determine a new "norm" for
clearing Customs. As soon as that new "norm" is known, the
time will be published here, and flight schedules adjusted
accordingly. Until that time, we recommend that inbound
travelers needing to make connecting flights with regular
commercial airlines add an additional hour to their routine
for clearing U.S. Customs.
Where is Island Air Charters?
Island Air Charters' passenger service counters and
executive offices are located in the Sheltair Aviation
Services, formerly known as the Jet Center, physically
located on the west side of Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood
International Airport in the shadow of the airport's control
tower. For directions, please follow the link to our
Location Page.
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What
documents do I need to travel to the Bahamas?
Regardless of age, all US citizens must have a valid
passport to enter the Bahamas or the United States. No
exceptions. Non-US citizens may travel on an Alien
Registration Card or foreign passport. For more information
concerning travel documents, please follow the link to our
Passenger Information Page.
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How
many passengers can you carry on each flight?
Island Air Charters
currently operates aircraft manufactured by two different
manufacturing companies. One company, a British owned
entity named Britten-Norman manufactures a 10 place
aircraft called the BN-2 Islander. Island Air
Charters operates three of these BN-2 Islanders primarily on
routes to destinations that are less than 120 nautical miles
for the companies Ft. Lauderdale home base. While the
BN-2 Islander comes from the factory with seating for ten,
due to the weight limitations of the aircraft, Island Air
Charters has found it capable of transporting only 7 adults
with minimal baggage, or a combined total weight of less
than 1200 pounds. For these reasons, the aircraft
operated by the company generally have seating for only
seven (7) passengers and one (1) pilot.
The company also operates
aircraft manufactured by Piper Aircraft, an American
aircraft manufacturer, designated as the PA-31-350
Chieftain. The Chieftain is a member of the Navajo
family of aircraft, and has a combination of the largest
fuselage and the most powerful piston engines in the Navajo
production line. Like the Britten-Norman BN-2
Islanders, the Chieftain is a 10 place aircraft.
However the noticeable difference between the two is that
the Chieftain can actually load and transport 10 people
(nine (9) passenger and one (1) pilot) and their respective
baggage, as the Chieftain has a payload of over 2000 pounds.
Island Air Charters generally
dispatches its Chieftain with seating for 7, since the last
row of passenger seats is in an area suitable for the cabin
storage of passenger baggage, however with minimal advance
notice the company will install the 8th and 9th passenger
seats to suit the needs of its customers.
(Also see
Our Aircraft)
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Does my
infant count as a passenger?
No, unless your child is 2 years or older.
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What are your destinations?
Island Air Charters is authorized to fly into and out of
any airport in all countries between Canada (on the North)
and Colombia and Venezuela (on the South), including (but
not limited to) the 48 contiguous United States, Mexico and
all countries in Central America, the Bahamas, Turks and
Caicos, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico,
the Leeward Islands, the Windward Islands and all islands in
the Caribbean Sea.
For a list of
locations that we service on a regular basis see our
Charter Destinations page.
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Why doesn't Island Air Charters use the new Cessna Caravan
Turboprop single-engine airplane on its routes?
The
Cessna Caravan (C-208)
Turboprop aircraft is arguably the best "back country"
aircraft ever made, but it has one fatal flaw that makes it
one of the worst choices for flying over water - it only has
one engine.
The benefits
of turboprop reliability are lost on an aircraft that only
has one engine, because there is absolutely no back-up for
it when it fails. In a single engine aircraft, when
any part of the engine; or any part of the propeller; or any
part of the propeller drive mechanism; or any part of the
numerous items that are driven by the engine and require the
engine to "run" - fails - the aircraft becomes a glider, and contact with the earth is eminent.
What makes
matters worse is, the main internal components of the engine
are extremely susceptible to salt-air corrosion - termed
sulphidation - the
inevitable product of flying it in South Florida and the
Bahamas! To combat this problem, Pratt & Whitney
Canada, the engine manufacturer, and Cessna, the aircraft
manufacturer, have both published engine washing procedures,
but unfortunately, the majority of the air charter companies
in South Florida that fly Caravans are not doing the wash
procedures as recommended because they say it is too costly!
While it is
perfectly legal - as a private individual - to purchase an
aircraft such as the single-engine Cessna Caravan, load up
you friends, your family,
and then fly them all across the open spans of the Gulfstream to the Bahamas skimming the wave tops, Federal Aviation Regulation 135.183
prohibits charter companies such as Island Air Charters and
its competitors,
from operating any single engine land aircraft (be it turboprop,
turbojet or piston powered) beyond the power-off glide ratio
distance from any land mass.
What this
regulation means in lay terms is, when [not "if"] that
single engine (or single prop) fails, the pilot must be at
an altitude high enough to be able
to glide the aircraft back to the shore - without the engine running -
and attempt a
[crash] landing on the shore, or more specifically on any dry
piece of land.
Crashing into
the water, mere feet from the beach surrounding some
desolate, uninhabited island is in violation of the
regulation, but crashing onto the actual beach itself is
O.K. (while saying a crash landing "anywhere" is an
acceptable conclusion to any flight)!
Logically
then, the farther the aircraft is from the shoreline, the
higher it must be. It's really quite simple and
Cessna, the aircraft manufacturer even provides a
chart in the pilot's operating handbook that shows how far the aircraft should be able to glide
from any given altitude.
Knowing this,
some charter companies still insist on operating their Caravans
across the Gulfstream below the required altitudes simply because
the cost of fuel required to climb the aircraft to the proper altitude reduces their
profits. These charter operators would rather risk
your life than fly the aircraft in conformance with the
applicable regulations.
The minimum
safe and legal altitude for a flight from Miami to Bimini
with the aircraft flying between the two closest points of land is 11,000 feet, while the minimum
safe and legal altitude for a flight from Fort Lauderdale to
Freeport is 15,000 feet. Of course, those altitudes are the minimum altitudes under the most
ideal conditions and without any winds. On a good sailing day, those altitudes increase to 13,000 feet and 17,000 feet respectively!
In fact, these altitudes are so high that both the pilot and the passengers are required to be provided with oxygen masks because Caravans are not pressurized.
Remember here, flying across the Gulfstream
in a charter Cessna Caravan to either of those two
destinations at altitudes less than those mentioned is a deliberate and direct violation of the law!
If you don't
think this can happen to you, think again. Since 2001,
two Caravans have had to ditch in the ocean off the
Southeast Florida coast and in the Bahamas because they were
being flown below the altitude necessary to glide back to
shore.
Island Air
Charters operated a Caravan for a short time, but found it impractical, if not downright impossible to operate the aircraft "legally" while complying
with Air Route Traffic Control procedures and instructions
that prevail in the airspace encompassing South Florida.
To skirt the
requirements of that pesky regulation, some charter
companies have equipped their Caravans with floats that have retractable wheels installed in them making them truly amphibian
aircraft. Since amphibian aircraft are designed for both
water landings and runway landings, the pilot can legally
take-off from any airport and fly across the open spans of
the Gulfstream at any altitude the pilot so chooses, and if
the engine or the prop fails, the pilot can make an
emergency water landing (or so the theory goes!).
The part here
that the FAA seems to have overlooked is the fact that,
while a Caravan equipped with floats is designed to operate
into and out of "back country" lakes, rivers and streams, it
is not necessarily equipped or designed to land in the open
ocean. A landing on a calm lake, river or stream should be
uneventful, if not routine for an experienced pilot, but
unfortunately, the chances of surviving a water landing in
seas higher than three feet, are at best, slim and diminish
rapidly as the seas increase above four feet, the typical
good weather seas that prevail off the coast of South
Florida.
For these
reasons, Island Air Charters has found the Cessna Caravan
unsuitable for the type flying it conducts on a daily basis
- flights back and forth across the Gulfstream.
The Cessna
Caravan is a wonderful aircraft that is operated daily
around the world safely and (for the most part) without
incident. It is a fantastic back country plane, that can
haul a tremendous amount for its size. For all its
attributes though, unfortunately, it still only has one
engine and one prop. That said, if, and when Cessna decides
to manufacture a Caravan with two engines, Island Air
Charters will probably be one of the first to order several.
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