Your Mauritius Seaplane Crash from Beach to Sky

Before you arrive

The single most useful thing to understand about this flight is that it has no infrastructure. There is no terminal, no security queue, no departure board and no gate. That makes the day much simpler than a flight normally is, and it also means the schedule is unforgiving in a way an airport's is not.

A slot on a light aircraft is a slot for one aircraft. If you are late, there is nothing to move you onto and no later departure with spare seats. This is why the operator asks for thirty minutes and why that request should be read as a floor rather than a suggestion.

Transport is not included, so allow properly for the drive. From the airport the coastal route takes about an hour in normal conditions, and from the north it takes longer than the map suggests because the road is not fast.

At the office

The meeting point is the operator's office on the beachfront at Belle Mare. You present your identification, the booking is confirmed, and weight is dealt with, since the pilot needs the figures before the aircraft is loaded.

The briefing is short and practical rather than ceremonial. It covers how you will board, where to put your feet, what to hold and what not to touch, how the headset works, and what the pilot will do at various points. On a small aircraft the briefing matters more than it does on an airliner, because you are inside the working part of the machine rather than behind a wall from it.

You will be told about the door, the seatbelt and the intercom. The intercom is the useful part: you can hear the pilot and the pilot can hear you, which turns the flight into a conversation rather than a broadcast.

Walking out and getting in

This is the part nobody pictures correctly beforehand. You walk down the beach to the water's edge and out into the shallows towards an aircraft floating there on two large floats. There is no pontoon.

Getting in means stepping up onto a float, then into the cabin, and settling into a seat that is much closer to everything than you are expecting. The cabin is small, the instruments are right there, and the pilot is beside you. Headsets go on. The door closes.

The whole sequence takes a couple of minutes and is the only physically awkward part of the day. Wet feet are guaranteed. Shoes you can carry are the correct answer.

The take-off run across the lagoon, spray coming off the floats

The take-off

The engine starts, and the aircraft taxis on the water like a boat, which is strange for the first thirty seconds and then simply ordinary. It turns into wind, holds, and then the power comes on.

The take-off run is the loudest and wettest thing that happens all day. Spray comes off the floats, the nose comes up, and the aircraft climbs onto the step of the floats and accelerates. Then, without any drama, the noise of water stops and you are flying. That transition is the moment everybody remembers.

A floatplane leaves the water at a low speed and climbs gently, which means two things. The view starts immediately, with the lagoon opening out below you within seconds. And the whole experience is less violent than a jet take-off rather than more, which surprises people who have been quietly dreading it.

In the air

The flight itself is low and slow by aviation standards, which is exactly what a scenic flight needs. You are high enough to see the pattern of the lagoon and low enough to make out individual coral heads, boats, and the shadow of the aircraft crossing the sand.

The pilot will point things out over the intercom and will usually bank to give both sides a view of anything worth seeing. Ask questions. On an aircraft this size the pilot is a guide as much as an operator, and the answers tend to be better than anything written down.

The route depends on the length you booked. All of them cover the lagoon off Palmar and Belle Mare and pass Ile aux Cerfs; the twenty and thirty minute flights continue south to the shelf edge and the eastern underwater waterfall; the thirty minute flight goes on again towards Lion Mountain and the coast beyond.

Landing and afterwards

The approach is long and shallow, coming down over water with the beach ahead. The floats touch with a hiss rather than a bump, the aircraft settles into the water, and the noise of the sea comes back. Then it taxis in, and you climb out into the shallows the way you climbed in.

From walking into the office to walking back onto the sand, even the longest flight is comfortably inside an hour. Most people are back on the beach still talking about the take-off.

If you bought the aerial photographs or video, those are handled afterwards rather than in the air, which is the sensible order. It also means you can spend the flight looking rather than filming, which is a better use of twenty minutes than most people manage.

Before you book

Your flight, step by step

1. Arrive at the beachfront office

   At least thirty minutes before departure, at Belle Mare. Transport is not included, so build the drive into your plan.

2. Identification and weights

   Passport or identity card, and the weight figures the pilot needs before loading the aircraft.

3. The briefing

   Short and practical: boarding, the door, the belt, the headset and what the pilot will do.

4. Walk down the beach

   Out into the shallows to the aircraft. There is no pontoon and no steps.

5. Board from the float

   Step up onto a float and into the cabin. This is the only awkward part of the day.

6. Water take-off

   Taxi, turn into wind, then spray and noise, and quite suddenly quiet. The view starts within seconds.

7. The route

   Lagoon and Ile aux Cerfs on every flight; the shelf edge and the waterfall on the longer two; Lion Mountain on the thirty.

8. Landing and back to the sand

   A long shallow approach, a hiss as the floats touch, a taxi in, and out into the shallows again.