Airplane Landing in St. Maarten

One of the stops during vacation last week was the island of St. Maarten. St. Maarten is a tiny island, roughly 36 square miles in area, that is split between France and the Dutch. The Dutch side is called St. Maarten while the French side is called St. Martin.

Legend states that the founders of the island, one Dutch and one French, decided to walk in opposite directions until they met again. At that point, the island would be split down an imaginary line and whoever walked the furthest got the most land. Well, something happened (rum, maybe?) and the French ended up with something like 21 of the 36 miles. Regardless of ownership, St. Maarten is a beautiful island and I got the opportunity to spend a few hours there with family.

As an aviation enthusiast, I love watching airplanes take off, land, turn, or whatever else it is they do. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of airplanes landing in St. Maarten, so when I found out that the cruise would be making a stop there, I was immediately salivating to go to this airport. Lucky for me, things worked out. The day was absolutely beautiful, the beach was postcard perfect, and the airplanes were coming in and going out. I couldn’t really have thought of a more entertaining way to get suntan, spend quality time with family, and spot airplanes all at the same time.

Although we didn’t see any huge 747’s come in, we did get to see a lot of private jets, some bigger commercial airliners (American Airlines, etc…), and smaller planes come in to the airport. One of us even managed to get blow INTO THE OCEAN by a bigger airplane’s jet blast! Fortunately she wasn’t hurt, but it was very funny to watch!!

Unfortunately, I did not have my camcorder at the time, but luckily my tiny little Casio Exilim EX-Z70 takes some nice videos. I took this video of a little Twin Otter aircraft coming in to land over our heads.

For those of you not yet using FireFox, here’s the link to the video.