You may have already heard about Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) - awesome airport located in the Dutch sector of the Island of St Martin in the Caribbean. The airport was started as a airplace for military aircrafts in 1942. In 1943, it converted to a civilian airport. There were several upgrades and remodelings. In 1964 main airport was relocated and a new terminal and control tower was built. The facilities were upraded once more in 1985 and 2001. Passenger traffic to St Martin increased several times, so Princess Juliana International Airport was heavily modernized and reorganized. What's so interesting and extraordinarily in this airport?
Because of awesome and difficult landing. Runway on this airport is just 2,180m long (7,407ft). Although, the ''big'' planes are landing here - B747, B757, A340... So, can you imagine altitude on the landing? In fact the departure for pilots is more difficult than the approach, because pilots required to avoid mountains in the departure path.
Incoming airplanes approach the island on short runway 10 flying very low over the famous Maho Beach. At any other airport aircraft fly at the same altitude at that point in the approach. Pictures and videos of low-flying airplanes were published in several news magazines, portals, social websites worldwide in early 2000 and looked so unreal that some were rated it as fakes. The thrilling approaches and excellent way to shoot images made the Princess Juliana airport one of the world's favorite places for planespotters and tourists.
Despite the big difficulties in approach, there have been no records of major incidents and crashes at the airport, though ALM Flight 980 crashed about 30 miles from St. Croix on 1970, after several unsuccessful landing attempts at Juliana airport.
In year 2007, the world's most notable airport handled 1,647,824 passengers and 103,650 aircraft movements. This airport are serving famous airline companys : Air Canada, Air France, American Airlines, American Eagle, Delta Air Lines, KLM, US Airways, WestJet and many others...
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