Tragedy at Maho Beach: Plane spotter dies fence surfing at SXM

Tragedy struck on Maho Beach Wednesday afternoon. A 57-year old tourist was blown over by the jet blast of a departing Caribbean Airlines 737 and struck her head on a concrete barrier. She was pronounced dead at the local hospital a short time later.

I’ve stood on that beach many times. My most recent visit was just four weeks ago for the Caribavia Caribbean Aviation Conference. Among the topics discussed was the appeal of the beach for AvGeeks of all stripes, watching the planes come and go, the intimacy of the experience. For this woman that led to death.

There are, of course, warnings plastered all over the beach. Most visitors heed the signage and stay more or less outside the blast area. Or at least on the beach itself rather than on the fence. Getting blown over on the beach means tumbling backwards down in to the water. Getting blown over on the fence means hitting the asphalt road or, as in the case of this tragedy, the concrete barrier that keeps sand off the runway. That is significantly more dangerous.

I filmed a lot of planes taking off and landing during my few days on the island. I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do with the content, but I was reviewing it last night after the news came in and again this morning. Turns out I have video of a 737 from Caribbean Airlines departing in the late afternoon and the blast it produces. This is the airline and aircraft type involved in the woman’s death.

The Airbus A340 from Air France is commonly joked about by AvGeeks as having “hair dryers” for engines, suggesting they aren’t all that powerful. Watching people and things (some of which are mine) get blown away on the beach makes it abundantly clear just how powerful those “tiny” engines really are.

At one point I thought I was outside the blast range siting on the beach, recording others being foolish. Turns out I was not far enough away to escape the 757-200’s impact. But at least I was down on the beach where I could fall down softly; my only problem was getting sand out of various nooks and crannies.

I stood on Maho Beach just a few weeks ago. Filmed a bunch of fence surfing. But always on the beach, not the fence/road. #AvGeek #SXM pic.twitter.com/A8bhgYLa8N

— Seth Miller (@WandrMe) July 13, 2017

In the immediate aftermath I saw mention on my Twitter timeline of suggestions about closing the beach or making other changes. I doubt that happens as the road is a necessary throughway to businesses and residences on the far side of the airport; it is their only connection to the rest of the island and room does not exist to build on the other side.

Rep from @sxmtweets calls out Maho Beach plane spotting as most popular cruise excursion. Good crowd yesterday. #Caribavia #AvGeek pic.twitter.com/sOYmhpPidy

— Seth Miller (@WandrMe) June 13, 2017

Also, despite this incident, Maho Beach is and will remain one of the primary tourist attractions on St Maarten. Local authorities highlighted it as the most popular activity for cruise ship visitors and sitting at the Sunset Grill adjacent to the beach on a random afternoon it was hard to dispute that claim. Busloads of visitors arrived from the port just to spend a couple hours in the sun with planes overhead. It is not the only reason people come to the island, of course, but it is big business and I cannot imagine that being cut.

Maybe the airport authority will increase the presence of guards warning people off the fence line. I was challenged once on a prior visit as I was setting up a camera. I was not going to stand on the fence line for that particular arrival; I just wanted the video from the runway centerline. The other guy won that argument and I didn’t get the shot. But I’m also not sure how viable staffing the fence throughout the day really is. For the late evening flights crowds are typically very small anyways as the cruise ships are packing up to sail on.

Surely this woman wasn’t expecting injury or death. But the warnings were all present and ignored, like so many others have before. The ultimate outcome was, unfortunately, far worse this time around. Terribly sad, indeed.