Fly the friendly skies

We flew out of that airport many times after our St. Martin vacations.  A relatively short runway for the bigger planes and the mountain that sits at the end of the runway requires a very steep climb during takeoff.  You can see a bit of it in this video.

At the opposite end of the runway, planes come in over the beach and almost immediately have to touch down.  Some idiots enjoy standing on the sandy beach to take the jet engine blast as the planes come overhead.  Tourist post cards play up the craziness of 747's landing.

This video shows the need for a crazy takeoff as well as the landing.

Flown in/out of there 3 times. It IS crazy. Have sat at the little bar right there at the landing beach sipping (chugging) Heinekens for a buck and a half on numerous occasions. On takeoff, the planes can't have a full load of fuel or they won't make the ascent. Have to land in about 15 min on another island (forget which) to add fuel to get home.

St. Maartin is Anita and my favorite island in deh Carib, mon. Need to get back there...

Here's a photo I took on the beach at St. Maarten (the Dutch side) of the mountains in the distance.  You can see the mountains, can't you? The mountains are much better in St. Martin (on the French side).

Must. Get. Back. To. The. Caribbean

cravnravn wrote:Must.  Get.  Back.   To.   The.   Caribbean

deh Carib, yes.

St. Maartin, absolutely.

Back in the late 90s, I wanted to fly to Vegas for the weekend.....and I also wanted to wrack up more flier miles.

So instead of a direct non-stop, I booked a plane-change at LAX, just for the hell of it.

Well, we were late taking off from Tucson and I missed my connecting flight to Vegas......had to book another at LAX.

It ended up taking me over 6 hours to finally get to Vegas, instead of the normal 1 hour non-stop flight.

I could have driven to Vegas in 6 hours.

But at least I got a couple of "free" bags of peanuts on the plane.

Hey, I like free. Free peanuts, free health care.....somebody has to pay, ain't gonna be me!!

BlueShoes1 wrote:Here's a photo I took on the beach at St. Maarten (the Dutch side) of the mountains in the distance.  You can see the mountains, can't you?  The mountains are much better in St. Martin (on the French side).

I don`t see any mountains.............Unless your talking about those huge mountains laying on the sand.