TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Departing St Maarten airport

For Sunday especially leave lots of time for airport security. We were 1 hour from the bag check to being thru security. The line up to go upstairs was all the way across the airport floor. There are scanners at bottom of stairs for boarding pass then scanners upstairs for passport, then your photo is taken & full body scan at security check.
It was slow going.

We did a bit better the prior Sunday...40 minutes

How much time does everyone recommend for Early Sunday morning (08:00) AA departures? (in early April)
Thanks

I would be in line just before 6:00 when they open.

There were backups at the 2 scanner locations when we left PJIA yesterday afternoon. People just don't know what to do, and there was only 1 attendant downstairs, and only a couple upstairs.

Once you have your boarding pass, you simply scan the boarding pass bar code at one of the kiosks at the bottom of the stairs / escalator. There are about a half dozen kiosks there.

Upstairs, you scan your passport at one of the other kiosks (I think there were about 4 of them there), then you step forward about 5 feet to a camera where your picture is taken (you need to take off your glasses for the picture). Once the camera takes your picture, you get a green arrow on the screen and the doors open for you to proceed to the security screening area. Put your stuff in the bins and send it through the scanner, walk through the metal detector, and you're in the departure lounge.