Ten Fun Facts About St. Maarten Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM)

The airport started as a reconnaissance base runway for the United States Air force in order to be able to protect (then) Netherlands Antilles vessels cruising to the United States from German submarines. The ships in question were tankers, carrying heavily needed Netherlands Antilles refined fuel for the allied bomber fleet during the second world war. It is estimated that over half of US bomber fuel in the second world war came from the Netherlands Antilles refineries.

Princess Juliana International Airports airport code SXM has on both the Dutch side of the island (St. Maarten) and French side” St. Martin become popular local slang and synonym to describe the entire island. The reason might be that this abbreviation is an easy way to avoid the many ways of spelling around (and implying an island side you discuss) Sint Maarten, Saint Martin, Saint Maarten (the latter being incorrect, but in use by Air France for decades).

Considering Maho beach is not one of the largest beaches on St. Maarten / St. Martin (though the other beaches are photogenic too!), did you ever realize the grains of sand making Maho Beach are the most featured ones on photos worldwide? The age of selfies only increased the amount of shared pictures of this beautiful sandy shore.

Princess Juliana International Airport is not the only airport on island. The French side has a smaller airport with Aeroport de Grand Case L’Esperance, serving only smaller plane types to the French Caribbean islands of St. Barths, Guadeloupe and Martinique. This fun fact provides travelers the unique possibility of doing an international transfer using two airports with just a 20 minute cab ride in between (but we clearly highly recommend to stay a bit longer and visit some more of our island first).

The famous supersonic airplane Aerospatiale BAC Concorde airplane type (better known as Concorde), landed on this St. Maarten airport twice. In December 1989, it carried French president Francois Mitterrand for an important summit with American president George H.W. Bush to discuss the future of post cold war Europe.

For diehard St. Maarten, Princess Juliana International Airport or just airplane fans there is a permanent YouTube webcam to see planes landing at Maho Beach all day. We know, we prefer the real beach experience too, but we are elated the demand to see beautiful St. Maarten is so high. The real fun facts about this webcam are that (1) due to aviation fanatics worldwide, this channel is one of the most visited St. Maarten websites out there (!), (2) the camera is manually controlled all day (!), zooming in and out on the Boeings and private jets landing; (3) many St. Maarten cafes use this channel as background tv and (4) the camera is located at Tortuga Bar & Restaurant, in fact one of the best locations to see the airplanes arrive and depart. But after this blog post, that secret gem might have been spoilt now.

We are convinced that Princess Juliana International Airport is one of the airports closest to an international border. Only the St. Maarten Causeway Bridge lies in between of the airport runway and the symbolic border monument (Concordia Monument) With 20 kilometers, Anguilla is not far away either. As far as we are aware, only the trinational airport Basel / Freiburg / Mulhouse with a part of Swiss soil on this French airport beats this record, Singapore’s Changi Airport only just losing out with some hundreds of meters to the Malaysian border. But we are happy to be proven otherwise, let us know.

Because of its airport location and a smart agreement with national St. Maarten carrier Winair, Domino’s Pizza St. Maarten serves pizza to a record amount of nations. Not just autonomous country St. Maarten gets its pizzas hot within half an hour, so do lovers of this Italian flatbread on the French side of the island and on neighboring islands / Dutch municipalities Saba and Statia. Given there is only five flights a day, Sabans and Statians do have to submit their orders timely.

In a demo version of edition X (and later part of the full package of runways) of the famed Flight Simulator computer program series, you are able to guide an airplane to this famed airstrip. Flying into Princess Juliana International Airport is supposed not to be easy for pilots – go and try out with the simulator!

In 1983, the kidnap of CEO Freddy Heineken of the namesake beer brand was world news. If they would not have noticed timely, the fact that Princess Juliana International Airport serves two nations had almost shortened the international escape of the two most notorious Dutch kidnappers Willem Holleeder and Cor van Hout. By lack of an extradition treaty between France and the Netherlands in 1983, they were lured into a beautiful French St. Martin holiday, making it necessary to shortly touch Kingdom of the Netherlands soil (hence creating a window of opportunity to arrest the two). Alas, van Hout saw through the trick and demanded a detour to get to the northern part of the island without passing by Princess Juliana International. After protests on St. Martin against the harboring the sought after gangsters and an evacuation to uninhabited Tintamarre, both kidnappers came to their senses and turned themselves in to the Dutch police shortly after. In a 2015 movie version of the story, Anthony Hopkins plays Heineken.