Princess Juliana International Airport

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The Princess Juliana International Airport is an airport on the Dutch part of the island of St. Martin in the Caribbean.

The airstrip is 2,180 meters long, which requires a restriction on the starting weight of large passenger jets. The airport is served by a wide range of aircraft - with small sports machines, regional aircraft such as the DHC -8, to the Boeing 747 and the Airbus A340. A Boeing 747 can not reach directly due to the short runway distant targets: full tank it would require a longer distance. Therefore, Curacao and Aruba is first ( KLM ), Martinique or Guadeloupe fly ( Corsair ) to refuel for the onward flight.

Flight Rules / Technical Details

The airport does not have an ILS, but only on VOR / DME or visual approach procedures in both landing directions. Furthermore, there is a relatively small distance behind the web 28 a hill, so contrasting planes must quickly gain altitude (see the section Special Features).

Airlines and destinations

The airport is from Europe by Air France A340 -300 ( Paris -Charles de Gaulle), KLM (MD -11 or B747 -400, Amsterdam), twice weekly by Air Caraibes ( A330 -200) of Paris -Orly and irregular in charter of Corsair ( B747 -400, Paris -Orly) served. U.S. Airways and other airlines from North America and the Caribbean offer daily scheduled flights to the USA, Canada and Caribbean Islands. As the home airport of the Princess Juliana International Airport for the Caribbean airline Windward Iceland Airways ( Winair ) serves.

In the area of ​​air freight is flown to San Juan, among others. Additionally, smaller more destinations will be served in the Caribbean region.

Extension

In recent years, the airport has been expanded to provide greater passenger capacity ( 2.5 million per year expected) to be able to record. The new terminal was opened in early November 2006 by Queen Beatrix.

Special

As a special attraction of the airport shall be its location. The landing threshold of runway 10 is only a few meters from Maho Beach. Due to the hilly terrain in the east of the airport can be landed exclusively coming from the west on runway 10;, crossing the planes in about 10 to 20 meters the beach. When rolling on the start of sand and small stones are stirred up by the jet thrust of the engines. Because the aircraft usually start heading east and you need to quickly gain altitude because of the hills, the full thrust is often made even when standing before the brakes are released. Why is dangerous for the spectators stay on the beach directly in front of the runway.

The airport is known for its ability to monitor aircraft in the deep final approach over a tropical sandy beach, at the world "Plane spotters ". In addition, daily daring tourists gather directly at the airport fence and fight against the energy of the turbine jets on (so-called " fence Surfing" ). Warning signs of the airport operator indicate that the exhaust jet takeoff and landing aircraft forming can cause serious, even fatal injuries.

For the information of onlookers at Maho Beach daily flight movements (airlines, arrival times and departure locations) are updated on the beach next to the runway of a restaurant operator manually on a surfboard.

To meet the current ICAO requirements, began on 8 March 2010, the construction of the RESA ( runway end safety area - Start-/Landebahnendsicherheitsfläche ) with a length of 90 m. For this beach was filled and a road laid. In early 2011 the work was completed.