TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Sunday Departure

I am used to leaving on a Saturday and know that I truly do need to leave a 3 hour window. This year I have an extra day and leaving Sunday. How much time to I need to plan on for check-in? I have a 15h53 departure time. Hoping to check in a bit early then a Rum Punch at Driftwood.

With the current state of the airport it’s almost impossible to judge these days When are you flying? The days of dropping bags many hours before flights have been gone for years. But depending when flying maybe it’s doable. I think you can only drop bags 3 hours before now

Also if you have first class or access to shorter check-in line that helps a lot.

If you are flying fairly soon, look at the departures tomorrow to see how many planes are leaving around the same time as you are. If Air France and a bunch of other big ones are leaving around the same time, you may need that three hours because of security and immigration. Also, check in time will depend on how many planes are going out on your airline and what time. AA can often have 3 or 4 planes going out on a particular day.

Our departure last Sunday was ALMOST flawless. Checked in at JB counter, no line at 12:30 pm. Flew through Customs and Immigration. Hung out upstairs where it was cool before going downstairs to depart at gate 5. Total clusterf$?!k. It was mayhem. So many people waiting to get on buses. Agent told us there wasn’t enough so we waited and waited. Crowds had formed for Gate 4 as our friends had same issue.

It was at least 30 minutes before our group which had been called could actually hand off our boarding passes to go outside. They packed us on 1 bus. Driver repeated we have a long ride so keep moving down. Our plane was farthest down on tarmac . Glad they had a ramp for us to get on plane. We were second to last to get on plane before doors were closed and we were taxiing.

Although we departed 45 min late we arrived in NY fairly close to schedule.