Princess Juliana International Airport
Princess Juliana International Airport is the main airport on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. The airport is located on the Dutch side of the island, in the country of Sint Maarten, close to the shore of Simpson Bay Lagoon. In 2015, the airport handled 1,829,543 passengers and around 60,000 aircraft movements. The airport serves as a hub for Winair and is the major gateway for the smaller Leeward Islands, including Anguilla, Saba, Saint Barthélemy and Sint Eustatius. It is named after Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, who landed there while she was heir presumptive in 1944, the year after the airport opened. The airport has very low-altitude flyover landing approaches because one end of its runway is extremely close to the shore and Maho Beach. While Princess Juliana International is the primary aviation gateway to the island, there is also a smaller public-use airport on the French side, in the French Collectivity of Saint Martin, called Grand Case-Espérance Airport.
Princess Juliana International Airport
Runway after Hurricane Irma
An Air Caraïbes Airbus A330-300 flying over Maho Beach shortly before touch-down.
Warning sign between runway 10 and Maho Beach
Saint Martin is an island in the northeast Caribbean, approximately 300 km (190 mi) east of Puerto Rico. The 87-square-kilometre (34 sq mi) island is divided roughly 60:40 between the French Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but the Dutch part is more populated than the French part. The division dates to 1648. The northern French part comprises the Collectivity of Saint Martin and is an overseas collectivity of the French Republic. The southern Dutch part comprises Sint Maarten and is one of four constituent countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Even though the island is an overseas possession of two European Union member states, only the French part of the island is part of the EU.
Flags flying in Marigot harbour, Saint-Martin
Crossing from St. Martin to Sint Maarten, dedicated in 2008
Extensive damage to buildings in Sint Maarten on 7 September 2017, hours after Hurricane Irma made landfall on the island
Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten, Dutch side