TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Flying Home

Flew home Wednesday, totally easy minus the scan and tag yourselves bag system at AA checkin (all airlines use it).

Flying FC so can have a bag up to 70lb but the automated machine assumed the bag is overweight so won’t accept, has to be done manually in that case. Watch out if over 23kg or whatever, $100 heavy luggage fees being applied liberally if you can’t reshuffle your luggage.

Took 10 minutes from checking baggage to going upstairs and walking into lounge. 1 free drink with priority pass but at 3pm they will ask people to leave to clear seats for KLM/Air France business class pax.

Great trip, had a final meal at barcode before returning car, was meh.


Also took off the “wrong way” over the beach, a treat.

Wonderful pictures! Can't believe how clear the pictures are. The windows must be clearer in first class! Thanks for posting all your reports and pictures.

What did you use to access the lounge? Cash or?

Amex Platinum

Thanks

Was showing your Amex Platinum enough or did you also need to show your Priority Pass card from them?

Priority pass is required. Although around 2:50pm they stopped letting anyone using Priority Pass access since arriving KLM/AF passengers.

The drink thing is a voucher and the included drinks are on a list at the bar, nothing too great.

Bummer. We have a 4:46 flight tomorrow. Delta. Guess they won’t let us in.

They should as long as you arrive a ~30min before 3pm. Also could be a slow day and no issue, they said its 50 seats contracted for KLM/AF passengers.

Worth trying if you have Priority Pass.

Sounds like the lounge isn’t worth the cost or trouble. Or the inconvenience of having to leave when Air France/KLM passengers come in. It appears like it’s basically their lounge and the rest of us need not apply.

Probably right unless you have a flight that isn't around a KLM/AF flight.

Can you say more about the tagging system?

Seems like most airports have them now, you print out your own luggage tags. Someone was there to help but then you place it on the belt and it weighs the luggage. If it’s over the 23kg limit for regular checked luggage it won’t “accept” the luggage and you’ll need to make it lighter or pay the heavy luggage fee.

But if you are priority or whatever the weight limit is higher but their system doesn’t recognize that, so the lady had to take the bag to the special assistance line.

Or just go directly to the priority check in line if your first/business class.

No longer set up like that.

Good to know. So you're saying AA doesn't have a priority line anymore?

Scubaman - We just departed last Saturday on Air Transat and they had an agent for Club Class (FC) and 2 agents for Economy. But ( I believe ) the way the system is supposed to work is Scan your passport enter travellers and number of checked bags and the machine prints your boarding passes and baggage tags. Attach the baggage tags and put them on the scale and away they go. Then proceed upstairs to security. Without talking to an agent. In a perfect world

👌😉Yes. Perfect world but then we're talking about SXM. That's another world all by itself. 😆

We have brand new passports with the hard "card" at the back. None of the scanners on entry would scan them - we were told because they were "new".... someone else told us they were not able to scan the thicker plastic.... I wonder if the departure scanners will scan them?

I don't think when departing you needed to insert the whole passport into a feeder thing. Maybe was just place it on a little glass scanner facedown, but not 100% sure, always a long day when leaving!

If I recall correctly, on arrival, you just place your passport face down on the scanner. On departure, it's fed into the scanner.

Yes, on arrival we just placed them on the glass scanner - I knew to press down hard, but they didn't work for anyone I saw with a new passport. We were all in the officer line. It was on a Tuesday, so still very quick, but a little apprehensive about feeding this fat, hard passport through a scanner, but I guess we'll see.

We used the new passports in October in departure and they worked fine. I know at one point we inserted them into a scanner. Don't know why they don't work on arrival. I thought everything was supposed to be state of the art.

We departed sxm first week in December American Airlines And used the priority line. The airport staff will try to encourage you to use the do it yourself kiosks but we politely decline. Also i had a new passport and my wife had an old passport and both worked on all machines arriving and departing. I hope this contiues on our February trip

Good to know. Hopefully they'll have a priority line for our May trip. 🤞