The coast changes character every few kilometres. Nuevo Vallarta and Flamingos, about 5 to 7 km from the runway, are a flat strip of large all-inclusive resorts and golf courses. Bucerías and La Cruz de Huanacaxtle are fishing towns with long, shallow beaches. Punta de Mita, at the tip of the bay, mixes a public village beach with a gated resort peninsula, and Litibú and Sayulita sit beyond it on surf beaches backed by jungle hills. Sayulita is on the federal tourism ministry’s list of Pueblos Mágicos, and its single main beach is crowded by mid-morning.
Distance from the airport decides what a drone can do. Mexico’s drone standard, NOM-107-SCT3-2019, keeps drones 9.2 km from an aerodrome without special authorisation, which grounds routine drone work at the Nuevo Vallarta resorts. Bucerías, about 12 km out, sits in the ring where the ceiling drops to 100 m. Punta de Mita and Sayulita, about 29 km away, are clear of both rings, and every paid flight is still made by a local, Mexican-registered pilot with liability insurance.
The clients are destination-wedding couples at the Punta Mita and Nuevo Vallarta resorts, families on all-inclusive stays, and younger couples renting villas in Sayulita and San Pancho. Gated resorts set their own rules for outside photographers, and some charge a vendor fee, so a session on resort grounds is cleared with the hotel first. The beach in front of every resort is federal and public, which keeps the sand itself open.
