The photo at left is of the international airport of St. Maarten. Located on the Dutch side, the airport has just one runway which barely accomodates the landing of 747's. Here is the link to the Princess Juliana International Airport's web page www.pjiae.com
A pilot's runway view of Princess Juliana International Airport looking toward the northeast.
This is probably the only airport in the world where you can stand on a beach and watch planes landing within 50 ft. over your head.
Another photo of the runway, in this photo you are looking southwest over Simpson Bay Lagoon. At the far end of the runway is Maho Beach and the Caribbean Ocean.
Some beachgoes who have had a couple of Carib beers love to stand behind DC-10's or 747's when they start to take off, the jet engine thrust pushes most of them and whatever is on the beach back into the ocean.
Sitting at the Sunset Beach Bar, all of those activities makes a great afternoon of entertainment.
Here is a great website to view airplanes and airports: http://www.airliners.net
A great shot of the Corsair 747 landing over Maho Beach ready to "KISS" the tarmack. The yellow roof shack next to the beach is the famous Sunset Beach Bar. You can visit their web site by clicking on the url: www.SunsetBeachBar.com
In the photo at left you can see part of the east/west runway, a plane taxiing for takeoff and a beached ship from Hurricane Lenny of 1999. Recently they dug around the ship and at high tide refloated the ship back into the ocean.
American Airlines is the major airline bringing tourists from the United States to the friendly island of St. Maarten. The airport is a full service airport but as you can see by this photo, ramps are still used to load and unload passengers from the airplanes. And the airport is not air/conditioned.
KLM 747 coming in for a landing at SXM airport over Maho Beach. What a thrill it is to be that close to this fantastic airplane. This photo was taken from the Sunset Beach Bar March 2004, in the lower right corner the blue that you see is the fellows cap that was next to me also taking photo's of the 747.
The Dutch Military had both still and video cameras setup to take photo's of this KLM 747 coming in for the landing, it was my guess they would be using them for tourism photos or maybe for security review purposes.
This shot of the KLM-747 is from the north side of Maho Beach facing the Sunset Beach Bar.
A couple months before we arrived, a tourist standing on Maho Beach was arrested for throwing a football and hitting an incoming plane. No harm to the plane but it could have caused an accident and he put many lives at risk.
My very best photo of spring 2001 on St. Maarten. This is a photo of a US AirWays airplane on arrival, when I shot the photo I did not see the little boy with the blue T-shirt standing in front of me waving a warm friendly welcome to the new St. Maarten visitors.
Shown at right is a French 747 landing at the airport taken by myself March 2001. The end of the runway is right at the edge of Maho Beach. People on the beach are in within 50 feet of the underbelly of the 747 when the plane flies over the beach.
When the 747 is ready to return to France it has to take off without a full load of fuel because it would make the plane to heavy to make it over the mountains to the east side of the airport. The plane has to fly over to the French island of Guadaloupe to take on the full load of fuel.
So here we are leaving the island and heading back to the states to make plans for the next landing on Princess Juliana Airport runway.