AIRPORT--St. Maarten continues to be a much-sought-after market. There is significant interest in the destination. This sums up reactions of particularly one major US airline during one-on-one meetings with a Princess Juliana International Airport SXM delegation at the recently concluded Routes Americas conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The airport delegation was led by Deputy Managing Director Larry Donker, Operations Division Acting Director Michel Hyman and Marketing and Customer Services Manager Suzy Kartokromo.
US carriers Delta and JetBlue said they were happy with their mainland services and the 2015 load factors. Delta offers flights to St. Maarten from Atlanta, Georgia, Minneapolis, Minnesota (during the high season) and New York City (JFK), while JetBlue flies here from Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City (JFK). No changes are expected in these routes for both airlines in 2016. Low cost carrier Spirit advised that its current weekly service from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was performing to its satisfaction.
“While carriers were overall very pleased with the operations and services at Airport SXM, we must pay close attention to those expressing concern,” said Donker.
JetBlue explained that its decision to discontinue its daily SXM-SJU (San Juan, Puerto Rico) service was due to a small local market in Puerto Rico, which is currently experiencing serious economic challenges. It was revealed that local demand is very weak and significant mainland service has resulted in a traffic shift.
COPA Airlines informed the delegation that its load factor had been declining since July 2015, although it did not give any indication of what it intended to do as a result.
Lack of marketing efforts by St. Maarten compared to the aggressive approach of other competing destinations, such as Barbados, Aruba, Curaçao and Jamaica is seen as a major weakness in maintaining and even attracting more airline service to St. Maarten.
“This puts us at risk of losing frequencies or service of carriers like Copa or Sunwing,” noted Donker. He added that many Caribbean islands such as Barbados were presenting incentive programmes to lure service to their destinations.
