I have noticed on several take offs the plane starts 200 ft or so from the fence. Hardly any sand gets blown and virtually no one hanging on the fence. Maybe this is the response to fence issues.

Interesting. That could well be a solution for smaller planes anyway, that take less runway to take off.

A friend who is an AA captain told us that the SXM runway is actually relatively long (since being lengthened) for a small airport so this makes sense. He also mentioned that, aircraft weight load is a major factor in which direction the plane takes off. (along with aircraft type and wind speed/direction of course) They try to send heavier loaded planes off to the West because of the mountain in the East. On this visit to SXM we've noticed most takeoffs are to the West but that could just be a matter of when we were around the airport.

Some Runway lengths from

http://www.landings.com/_landings/pages/search/search_ap-ident.html

SXM 7030'
DCA 7170', 5000', 5204'
LGA 7001', 7003'