Airport has a problem. People fly at 6 am to hit one of the 7 hubs serving St Martin. Those flights all show up at 2pm. Same for flights from Europe. On the way home people want to hit their connection destination by midnight. This means all the flights have to leave around 3pm. That's not the most efficient way to run an airport. The airport experience wasn't that great before Irma. Best flight I had then was the 9am flight from St Martin to Miami. There's no crowd at 8 in the morning.
Those gray walls in the terminal are temporary. When the airport is finished it will be better. Jetways from the 2nd floor make a big difference.
We flew in and out in the middle of February. It was better than experiences before Irma, but we flew in and out on Wednesdays. The air conditioning was better especially the fish-tank departure area.