Chris Kjelgaard

Having formalized last month the structure of a nine-member nation/territory Air Service Development Committee (ASDC) for the Northeast Caribbean region, Sint Maarten’s Princess Juliana International Airport has amplified efforts to develop further as a hub and gateway airport for the region.

 


The airport, which now brands itself as "SXM Airport" after its IATA code, wants to add more carriers and new destinations to its flight schedule and has targeted several carriers and markets it regards as particularly important.

 


Regina LaBega, SXM Airport’s managing director and a leading advocate for its traffic development effort, stressed the importance of the launch of service to SXM in 2010 by Panama’s Copa Airlines—the first Latin American scheduled carrier to do so. Still, the airport has set its sights on several much larger carriers.

 


“The courtship with Copa and then its [commitment] was so nice because it took so long,” LaBega told AIN. “But the one we’re really trying to get is Southwest [Airlines]; that’s a big one.”

 


SXM has also entered talks with JetBlue Airways, which started serving the airport in 2008 with a daily flight from New York JFK and subsequently added daily Boston and San Juan flights, over the prospect of adding service from its Southern Florida focus city, Fort Lauderdale.

 


Beyond those efforts, SXM harbors still more lofty ambitions. “We need to court LATAM,” said LaBega, who noted that visitor traffic from South America to the Northeast Caribbean is growing stronger every July and August, the coldest winter months throughout much of southern hemisphere.

 


In part because SXM Airport sits just yards away from a large sea inlet ideal for transfers from aircraft to sailboats, the airport wants to attract scheduled or charter business from either British Airways or Virgin Atlantic Airways. It continues discussions with both.

 


The airport also aspires to increase its European destination list beyond its traditional Amsterdam and Paris markets. (Sint Maarten is an autonomous constituent country of the Netherlands, but it shares the island of Saint Martin with the French overseas collectivity of Saint-Martin.)

 


SXM’s efforts to draw more traffic from Europe have also resulted in a commitment by Dutch charter carrier Arkefly to begin operating charter flights from Amsterdam in December with the first Boeing 787s to serve the airport. Arkefly operates as a member of the TUI Group, the world’s largest travel group, and LeBega hopes that once TUI gains experience serving Sint Maarten, several of its other in-house carriers from other European countries will become interested in serving SXM.

 


SXM’s nine-member ASDC contains representatives from Sint Maarten, Saint-Martin and the island nations or territories of Anguilla, Dominica, St. Barthélémy, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Nevis and the British Virgin Islands. The airport continues talks with St. Kitts about that island’s potential participation as well.

 


Each of the member islands and territories either considers SXM its main international gateway for visitors from outside the region, or as one of the international airports providing it with feed and origin-and-destination traffic, both passenger and cargo.

 


Locally based carrier Winair, primarily an operator of Twin Otters (it also flies a leased ATR 42 on its SXM-Dominica route) and Antigua-based airline LIAT play vital roles in securing and enlarging SXM’s status as a major hub for the Northeast Caribbean region.

 


However, LaBega hinted at more to come from the region. MD-80 operator Insel Air, the national airline of Curaçao, serves Sint Maarten on a frequent basis and LaBega said the Dutch Caribbean carrier “is very interested in making SXM a hub” for its services throughout the Caribbean and to North and Latin America.

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