TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Airport Saturday departure

Can anyone provide any advice on departing from SXM airport Saturday afternoon? How much time needs to be allotted? As well, once you pass security are there any food services or washroom facilities? Thanks in advance

Left on sat Feb 23 and was annoyed that we arrived at noon for a 3 pm flight. 2 hours would have sufficed.

There was pizza, burgers, a bar, bakery and other stores past security.

Agree with The Captain. It's crowded and congested, but two hours should suffice. Lots of people indulging in Domino's pizza and subs while waiting in the area above the gates. Bathrooms are right there, but they're rather small and a line formed for the ladies room. As I often say to my wife, "don't wait too long to use the facilities." Even the men's room had a little wait. That was on a Sunday so I would think a Saturday would be similar. Just have your passport open and ready to display. We had to show ours five times from the point of check-in until seated on the plane. That may have been a record for us.

Do you enter doors where you arrived?

RonDon----what???????

Must have still been asleep. When departing where do you enter airport? Would it be through the same doors that we exited airport to street?

Yes it would

Just returned from SXM on Tuesday March 19, After checking in at AA, the lines were very long, 1hour process to go thru Customs and Immigration. There were three scanners but immigration were only using two. After 60 + trips one my worst experiences leaving St. Martin!

Yes, RonDon you do. Then as you enter there are 24 ticket windows for check-in. If you arrive too early they may have you wait to get in line if there's another flight with the same airline leaving before you. In our case we had to wait for the JFK flight to check in, then they let the Atlanta folks line up. But, it went pretty well overall. Once through, you go through security which was a little slow, and there's no 'TSA Pre-check' here! Once through that area, you enter a large waiting room that had plenty of places to sit and relax. Here you can get something to eat or drink while you wait, and hit the bathrooms as well. Finally, you will head don to one of seven make-shift gates that really aren't actually airport gates but just doors leaving the building. Some people got on buses to take them to their plans, but our Delta flight was right there so we just walked over to it. As previously mentioned on this forum there are no jetways that I could see, but the old-style portable stairs into the airplane. All-in-all it went good, and our flight was only 10 minutes late getting off the ground.

That is truly amazing in that is SO DAMN RANDOM! I mean for a Sat 3 PM departure, from check in at Jetblue to past security (removing shoes, etc) it was 30 mins. That 2.5 hours to blow in the terminal.

Here's to hoping for more consistency in the future!

Thank you Sammy.

Captain what you said just makes me want to stay even more.