30A and Destin from Atlanta in an hour

Half of Atlanta owns or rents on 30A and drives down I-85 and 331 to get there. It is five and a half hours if the traffic in Montgomery behaves. The flight from PDK is about an hour.

Which airport

Destin Executive (DTS) is the one for Destin proper, Sandestin and the east end of 30A: Seaside, WaterColor, Alys and Rosemary are twenty to thirty minutes by car. Northwest Florida Beaches (ECP) is the better arrival for Rosemary, Inlet Beach and Panama City Beach, and it has a proper private terminal. Both are about an hour from Atlanta.

For Gulf Shores and Orange Beach it is Jack Edwards, the same hour. Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach we do less often, but they are no further.

The typical trip

Thursday afternoon out, Sunday afternoon home. Family of four or five, beach bags, the dog, sometimes the paddleboard if it packs down. The airplane is on the ground before the car would have reached Columbus. Coming home on Sunday you skip the worst traffic in the Southeast, which is the northbound crawl on 331 at four in the afternoon.

We also fly a fair number of long weekends for people who own down there and want to use the house more than they do. When the trip is an hour instead of a day, you go for two nights instead of saving it up for a week.

Empty legs

Because so many of our trips go to the coast, the airplane repositions along this route more than any other. Those repositioning flights are published as empty legs and go out by text to people on the list, at a fraction of a full charter. If your dates are flexible it is worth being on it.

One firm number for the round trip, no membership required. Tell us your dates.