The return of Spirit Airlines (see Monday paper) from Fort Lauderdale is obviously most welcome, as was last month’s resumption of flights by United Airlines out of Newark, New Jersey. These weekly additions should respectively help cover the US Southeast and the Tri-state area, in addition to daily service from Miami on American Airlines, Atlanta on Delta and New York on JetBlue.
The same goes for recent news that Air Transat and Air Canada intend to start flying to St. Maarten again. The Canadian market has grown significantly in importance during recent years and the availability of adequate airlift from big cities such as Toronto and Montreal will be key to maintaining that positive trend.
Of course, much is going to depend on how quickly still-closed large resorts reopen. However, without sufficient direct connections to major hubs in North America, reviving the island’s dominant stayover tourism sector to fill rooms as they become available would be difficult at best.
There is also the cost aspect. Airfares to SXM have been relatively high to say the least, which is not in the interest of the destination and long-term also not of the very airlines involved. A bit more competition may help reduce these rates, because travellers are becoming increasingly price-conscious.
However, all this only really makes sense if Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) can be restored to its former glory sooner rather than later. It seems some work is now being done on the terminal’s roof, which hopefully means this apparent, pressing bottleneck will finally be overcome.
