St Barths. The one island your jet cannot land on.

Gustaf III is one of the most demanding commercial aerodromes anywhere. The approach comes over a ridge at Col de la Tourmente and descends steeply to a runway of around 646 metres that finishes at the sand of St Jean beach. Only small aircraft are certified to use it, in practice types such as the Pilatus PC-12, the Cessna Caravan, the Twin Otter and the Britten-Norman Islander, and the pilots flying them hold a specific qualification for the field obtained through supervised landings there. It is daylight operations only: there is no runway lighting and the terrain rules out an instrument approach in the dark.

So the jet, whatever its size, lands at Princess Juliana on St Maarten. From there the normal onward leg is a short shuttle flight to St Barths of about ten to fifteen minutes, flown by the local operators who work the route all day. It is a lovely flight and it is also the piece that most often goes wrong when it has been left to chance: the last aircraft of the day goes before sunset, and a long haul arrival that slips by ninety minutes can miss it entirely. Build the day so that the transatlantic leg lands with hours in hand, not minutes. See private jet charter, ultra long range jets and heavy jets.

It is worth deciding in advance what happens if the long haul leg is delayed past the last daylight movement into SBH. The honest options are a night on St Maarten and an early crossing the next morning, or a boat transfer in the evening, which is possible in a way that a flight is not. Neither is a disaster if it was planned for. Both are miserable if the first anyone thinks about it is on the apron at Princess Juliana at dusk.

This is the single most useful thing we do for clients coming to St Barths: hold the whole chain, know where every part of it is, and have the alternative already standing by rather than improvised. One person, one plan, whatever hour it turns out to be.

Gustavia is the harbour and the town, a small, deep, well protected port ringed with quayside berths that are among the most sought after in the Caribbean. Berths are finite and in the festive fortnight they are spoken for far in advance, in size bands, with larger vessels anchoring in the outer roads or off Colombier and running guests in by tender. Anchoring off is not the consolation prize it sounds: the tender ride is short and the view is better.

A yacht solves several St Barths problems simultaneously. It removes the villa question, it gives a large group somewhere to eat and sleep that is not subject to the island's limited road network, and it turns the surrounding islands into day trips. It also means the aircraft problem becomes a single flight to St Maarten with a tender waiting. We arrange charters, berths and tender movements through operators and agents we know. See yacht charter, motor yachts and day charter.