Ford and I recently took a quick weekend trip to St. Barts, a French overseas territory about 20 miles from St. Martin. While there’s a lot to like about St. Barts, as an aviation geek, what I was most excited about was the airport.
Continue reading: St. Barts’ Exhilarating Airport (SBH): How To Get There, And Why It’s So Fun
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
There are also flights to SFG which I recommend if Saint Martin (the island) is the destination. I find immigration at SXM an absolute disaster with nonsensical procedures and queues sometimes even exceeding an hour. Landing at SFG is a great way to get around this, especially for EU citizens, since you land in France rather than in Sint Maarten.
It’s fantastic and it’s “so much fun” “it’s fun” but it is not “so fun” that isn’t English fun is a verb … I know ….
In my travel agent days the people who were too self-important to stay in SXM stayed in St. Barts. @Lucky, you're continuing to drift from your foundation of free/cheap luxury travel for normal people through points and miles. I don't begrudge you the hyper-bougie migration you've embraced but it would only be fair to be clear about that to readers. If we can't emulate without extremely painful costs then aren't you just rubbing your privilege in our faces? I've been reading you for closing on two decades. I understand that things change, I just think that in fairness you should be clear when your blog makes significant shifts that may disconcert existing readers. We've definitely gone there.
@ Christian -- I hear you, so let me make two points.
First, I think there's a unique aviation angle here to flying into St. Barts, regardless of the actual accommodations there (I haven't even written about anything hotel related).
Regarding my evolving hotel situation, I of course can't deny that either, and I've tried to address that here:
https://onemileatatime.com/insights/hotel-industry-evolved-preferences/
I think we also have to acknowledge the other side of this, which is that points hotels have evolved for the worse. Like, at some point when a free night at a Hyatt costs up to 75K points and you can otherwise redeem those points as cash toward the cost of a hotel stay that potentially costs $1,500+, I'm not sure the value is there in the way it used to be. On the airline front, it's a somewhat different story, though.
@ AJO -- Depends who you ask! In English, it's often called St. Barts, which is what I'm going with. But yeah, the "authentic" way is St. Barths or St. Barth.
I went in April and I lived St Barth. But I got cheated out of the landing though. For whatever reason, win air canceled all of the flights after 3 pm on the Saturday I flew, so there was a last minute mad dash to the ferry for all waiting at the airport. Win air just had Teri manipulations that day and terrible customer service. The ride on the ferry was rough and no fun. Did fly back to sxm and it was a beautiful flight. I did enjoy the plane watching from that hill while I was there.
When I visit St. Barts I fly St. Barth Commuter from SFG to SBH which is a France to France domestic flight and very simple because both airports are tiny. The flight itself is very cool and with such a small plane I have been able to sit in the co pilot seat which is a whole other experience in itself.
There's a lovely small boutique hotel right next to the airport, Pearl Beach St. Barths, where you can swim off their beach and inbound aircraft literally come in right over your head for landing.
I'm not completely sure about the purpose of this article, it starts like a trip report but then proceeds to show some videos and photos from 2 years ago.
There are lovely Airbnbs on St. Barts - I stayed in one of them during my last visit a few years ago. It is possible to have an enjoyable vacation in St. Barts which reasonable expenses. And to enjoy this landing approach ! Although I noticed that there are wealthy guests which book a trip there due to the prestige even they do look out of place.
SBH is a cool approach; didn’t have the best experience with Winair (chaotic, delayed, bad communication, etc.) Still, worth a visit!
I'm sad to see you missed SXM Airways. They operate a number of flights a day. Wouldn't have known about this unless I didn't see options on Expedia under "FlexFlight" (which eTickets for SXM Airways). It's a bit confusing because on the SXM Airways website if you book directly through them, you have to click on "shared charters" and then the flights/pricing show up. Sam Chui did a video review of one of their BN-2 planes. Generous policies. The staff was super friendly, amazing, experienced pilots - I truly had a great 10 minute trip with them very recently.
Marco is a jerk. How much did you pay for your subscription to this "worthless" document?
WOW! Okay this is so cool. Just watching one of the videos made my stomach lurch a bit (in an excited avgeek way). Officially on my bucket list!