TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin New charter airline?

Daily Herald story

He talks about flights to Anguilla, must be a seaplane, as I don't remember seeing an airport of any type on Anguilla.

Anguilla has a very nice small airport.
Anguilla Air Service has 2-3 daily flights from SXM to AXA and Anguilla Air Express (aka Rainbow Air), Seaborne, Tradewinds and Cape Air all have daily flights from San Juan to Anguilla.
Ellen

Looking at google earth, I now do see Clayton J Lloyd International Airport......didn't know it existed until I saw this view.....only thought that ferries went over to that island....

That's it, they expanded it 10 years ago, but still did not make the runway long enough for big planes to land.
We like to fly in, but the timing is not always right, next trip we fly back and forth from SXM- 8 minutes each way, heaven.
Ellen

I thought in 2013 passing the airport on the way to Shoal Bay we saw 737, private or a charter, no airline markings.
J&B

Could be, they would need an adept pilot to land on the short runway. All the commercial planes are small, even the ones from SJU are not that big.
Ellen

Last year during christmas, SXM had no more available parking for private jets so they all went to Anguilla and parked there. SXM was full of private jets of all sizes and types.

An aircraft that is configured for commercial use (sardine can seating)needs a lot more runway than one used as a private plane carrying just a few people.

Clayton J. Lloyd airport has 5,000 feet of level runway available, allowing a large variety of aircraft to land and take off. Compare that to St. Barts with only 2300 feet of DOWNHILL runway that ends in the water...

5,000 ft is a decent civil airport runway for anything other than the big long-haul airline jets.

SXM's PJIA runway, by the way, is 7,546 ft long...

Anguilla regularly parks all of the extra aircraft that can not be parked at Julianna during the Christmas/New Year's Holidays and the Bucket week.

The planes drop guests at SXM then make the trip over to Anguilla where the pilots are forced to either come back to SXM or hang out on Anguilla.

Being a pilot is a rough job, but somebody's got to do it...lol...
<img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Wink.gif" alt="" />

This was written back in 2010 by an Anguilla resident:

Large planes, including about a third of the private jets that were landing here a year ago, are unable to land in Anguilla because the Runway End Safety Area (RESA) that our government promised to build several years ago was never built, and the regional civil aviation authorities got tired of our promises. This 500 yard unpaved addition is one problem. Another is whether there is sufficient traffic to warrant regular flights from Atlanta, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale or Miami, how often, and at what price point.
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In 2003, we first flew in on the American Eagle from SJU - it was bigger than what we fly on now from SJU. But, several years ago AA pulled out, and now all the planes from SJU to AXA are quite small. I don't mind small from SXM - AXA - 8 minutes I can live with - that hour+ flight is painful. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Yikes.gif" alt="" />

Plane parking lot @ airport in Anquilla:

YIKES!!! A picture is worth a thousand words!!! Is that a real picture???

According to the interwebs....and the story is the same as what others have shared:
"The ramp at St.Maarten gets very full around New Year, making it necessary for many business jets to fly over to Anguilla to re-park"

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Gulfstream-Aerospace-G-IV/2393432/L/


Looks like the CIA plane is super easy to spot....joking.

I'd hate to own the small prop plane in the corner and have an emergency where I to take off ahead of schedule....wonder what the procedure (cost) is for that. Looks like moving all those fancy planes responsibly into that tight of space would take time and several employees.

I have not seen that picture, AXA has a very small airfield - that's a lot of planes, however, I do know they get a lot of traffic at Christmas and New Years.

Google Earth confirmed. I wonder if they were just starting to fill the lot and expected the entire parking area to be full with over 3 times the planes.....now that would be a picture!

Carol
Page 1 of this thread is fine, but page 2 is super wide.

Looks OK to me...

It probably depends on your screen resolution. I find that the large photos cause the screen to be stretched beyond the width that I can see on my laptop without scrolling to the right.