You need a 275 knot airplane if you’re based in South Florida

by philg

A recent email to a friend in the aviation world:

Florida isn’t the greatest for 150-knot GA. If you fly for two hours you end up in a place that looks almost exactly like the place where you live (flat, palm trees, a beach nearby, etc.). It’s not like going from BED to MVY, BTV, or BHB where the differences are dramatic after a short flight. If you assume that passengers can’t tolerate more than about 2 hours in a light plane you probably need to be going at least 275 knots so that you can make it to Chattanooga and the beginning of the mountains within 2 hours. I guess that means a Piper Meridian is the minimum if you want to get a family of non-pilots interested in a trip?

[The airports listed above are Bedford, Maskachusetts, Martha’s Vineyard, Burlington, Vermont, and Bar Harbor, Maine. That reminds me to wonder the status of the lawsuits about the cruel and unusual punishment suffered by the asylum-seekers in being flown for free from Texas to MVY. “A federal judge says migrants can sue the company that flew them to Martha’s Vineyard” (state-sponsored NPR, April 2024). State-sponsored NPR did an article in 2023 about an MVY migrant living in a free apartment and receiving cash “under the table”. What are the migrant’s damages? He can’t demand reimbursement for the high housing costs in Maskachusetts because he’s not paying anything for housing. He can’t demand reimbursement of income tax being charged by Maskachusetts that he wouldn’t have had to pay in tax-free Texas because he isn’t pay any tax in MA.]

The map below shows the distance to the nearest mountains. Another reason why the Florida lifestyle isn’t cheap!

7 thoughts on “You need a 275 knot airplane if you’re based in South Florida”

  1. Heaven forbid the rich just live in Gainesville & save a few billion on avgas. Gotter Tuck once tried & failed to paramotor across the peninsula before running out of fuel.

  2. Seems like even for sufficiently wealthy there is trade off between making Portugal equity great again and escaping Florida for the hills without passengers gets bored. Do not mean to intrude but trying to make sense of shared info.

  3. Now you see why TN and NC are popular migratory destinations.

    Save FL for when you can’t walk hills/stairs anymore.

    I’d like you to write a post about what you think is the appropriate level of providing for your family without spoiling them.

  4. Can’t you go to the Bahamas? Sure, they have palm trees, but the weather is generally better and the ocean is nicer

    • SM: I don’t think that the weather in the Bahamas is significantly different from what Florida experiences. The Bahamas has some nice sheltered beaches, but the water isn’t any warmer than at our local beach in Jupiter. If you want significantly warmer weather than Florida and warmer water you need to go to the Turks and Caicos or beyond. Most of the food everywhere in the Caribbean is shipped in from Florida. Why not go to the Cheesecake Factory in Palm Beach Gardens and get the salad a day or two earlier than you could in a high-end Caribbean resort?

      A friend recently spent about $50,000 on a one-week Bahamas vacation for his Boston-based family (NetJets plus house rental). He could look at the ocean from the rental house, which we can’t do (we’re about 3 miles inland), but otherwise he didn’t have access to anything special.

  5. Don’t you get cooler weather, better coral reefs, and clearer water in the Bahamas, when compared to Florida? (Your problem with Florida is that it’s not warm enough?)

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