TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin On my way to PJIA

Will be heading to airport in about 2 hours for our redeye to CLT and then PJIA tomorrow. That's if we get to airport through the "President" in town traffic. He landed at 5pm and all roads are pretty much shut down along with air traffic.

Enjoy your trip!

Interesting quotes

Have a wonderful trip!!!

Enjoy!

Hey Scuba, if you’re on AA 2478 Sunday that’s my flight. I’ll try to look you up….Dave

We will be there tomorrow as well. Flight from Toronto.

We arrive next Saturday! Can’t wait!

That was the one. What a cluster. Circled around for close to an hour and then wait for Air France and Jet Blue to get their bags before ours came out.

Daves coming tomorrow AA2478. If you thought arrival was bad I hope you don't depart downstairs! Maybe less busy but not many seats.

Scuba--why did you circle for an hour? At least you are finally there.

They said when we left CLT the flight was going to take 3hrs 11min. Normally it's always been 4÷ hours. We were so early there was no place to land and park so the pilot announced. I never saw so many wheelchairs in use. When we were let into luggage area Air France bags where just coming out, then JB then us. With all the wheelchairs it just plugged the area up so people couldn't get to their bags. At least they were handing out bottled water and there is also a filling station outside while waiting to get in.

That seems odd to me, no place to park.

Carol.....when we landed on May 2, we were told there would be a little wait as we had to wait for a ground crew to show up. If several planes are ahead of you, this can cause a wait. This could have been the problem.

CaribLee--Huh. OK. So, in addition to everything else they can't accomplish, PJIA hasn't hired enough ground crew to do the job?

Airlines are typically responsible for their own ground crew along with gate agents and check-in staff.

eightzerobits--I frankly doubt that is the case in SXM. I am pretty sure that check-in staff at SXM are not employees of the airlines.

How could that surprise you with everything else going on with this rebuild.

What I meant was literally no place to PARK? Yes, agreed, could be no place to park close enough to use a jetway, but no place to PARK? No room on the tarmac? Nah, doesn't make sense. Although not much that they do makes sense.

We departed yesterday on AA flight to Miami scheduled for 2:35pm. We departed at 2:25pm. We arrived early so had a good view of all the activity at the prime time for arrivals and departures. It was very busy. At one time, there were three planes lined up on the tarmac, one departing and two waiting for a gate. Our flight began boarding at 1:15 from gate C3. Over one hour before departure. We boarded a bus and were transported past all the gates, out past the fuel depot than to the middle of the tarmac where our plane was located. It was parked next to a Delta plane that had just arrived and was off loading passengers. Our boarding process was complete by 2:10 and off we went to runway 28 for takeoff. We arrived in Miami 30 minutes early with no gate available for 15 minutes. Got through Customs in record time. Had signed up for MPC but didn't need it as there was nobody in the line ahead of us.

If you can avoid arriving Saturday or Sunday it is a good idea. As Scuba man has said before, just deal with it and enjoy the island!

chicstersun--really sucks, apparently AA to Miami normally does not get a jetway. I wonder who they allocate them to??

We departed yesterday on the 12:30 AA flight to Miami and boarded via jetway. We had the same experience as chictersun at customs in Miami. Absolutely nobody in line, walked right up to the agent.

jbutah--didn't realize there was an AA flight leaving SXM for Miami that early. Our flight in June coming home leaves at 2:45 and it is the first one of the day, I think.

Same here. Ours departs 2:45 too to MIA.

I think the difference is sometime between now and June is when they go from three flights a day down to two. Definitely no flights to Miami earlier than 2:45 in the middle of June.

Yes , they must go down to two. Our flight was overbooked and I think they started bumping people to the later flights. I believe I heard the lady at the counter saying they had a 12:30, 2 something and then a 4 something.

Hope they were giving people something good to go to one of the other flights. I probably would have taken it, if they gave a couple hundred in flight credits.

Same thing for us in July going to PJIA. We were booked on earlier flight then they consolidated the 2 flights into one later flight. Luckily we were able to keep our 4 FC seats.