Travel to St. Kitts

The staff at Hotel L'Esplanade where we were staying on St. Martin made the arrangements with Winair by telephone several days in advance.  Payment was made by credit card and an e-ticket was issued with a fax confirmation.  That was a nice change from years past when we had to go to Winair's office at Juliana to purchase the required paper tickets.

The day of our trip Ed arose at 5:00am and Sandra shortly thereafter to prepare for our adventure.  After copious amounts of coffee and a last check of the camera equipment, we enjoyed a leisurely drive through the lowlands to Princess Juliana Airport and arrived with plenty of time to check-in for our 8:25am scheduled departure.  The check-in process was uneventful and we proceeded to Gate 9 as instructed.  There we waited and waited and waited as the departure time arrived and passed with no explanation given nor any indication of when or if the flight would occur.  There were no flight numbers or any other relevant information posted at the gate and a number of different flights were departing from it as we waited.  Talk about confusing.

The female gate agent for Winair occasionally would pick up the microphone and make announcements over the PA system about flight boardings that for most of the waiting passengers were totally incomprehensible.  Subsequently, we determined the PA system was not at fault - she was just as incomprehensible speaking directly to you - sort of like she had her mouth full of Johnny Cake.  During this time several passengers (not us) approached her desk seeking to understand and let's just say we observed her interpersonal skills left a considerable amount to be desired - they never did get straight answers, as she rudely waived them off or barked some unintelligible comment.  During one of her frequent absences from her station Ed spotted a very young looking Winair staff member and decided to make an inquiry to him.  This young man was courteous and extremely well spoken - what a contrast!  He indicated our flight was delayed because the plane currently was on St. Barths waiting to have a malfunctioning radio replaced.

Our flight finally began boarding 1 hour and 10 minutes late, but not before Ms. Winair personality made several more announcements which people in the area could not understand and consequently would gather at her desk seeking clarification, only to be chased away if they were not on whatever flight was trying to board.  Amazing.  Perhaps even more amazing or perhaps we imagined it was that the plane which we finally boarded had been sitting outside the gate in plain view the entire time we had been there and no one had been working on it.  Maybe it was a "backup" plane in reserve for such needs.

We were greeted at the plane by an exceptionally attractive woman who was very friendly and nice.  After she had most people greeted and seated, she moved forward to the cockpit and that's when we realized she was the copilot.  Subsequently, she made an announcement about the flight and apologized for the delay because of "radio maintenance needs."

The DHC-6-300 Twin Otter seats 19 passengers and this one was quite full.  We placed ourselves on the single seat side of the aisle hoping to maximize our collective opportunities to make photos during the flight.  Three huge, and we do mean huge, women boarded after us with far too much carryon baggage to which the Winair staff was paying no attention with respect to their stated limitations for such.  They proceeded to bash us about as they struggled to get down the narrow aisle way and into the very small seats.  It would in some respects have been comical seeing them perched half on the seat and the rest of their derrieres essentially completely obstructing the aisle (no thought was given to even attempting to use the seatbelts), but it was obvious to us what a tremendous safety hazard this situation represented if there had been a need for quick, emergency evacuation of the plane by the other passengers.  It just couldn't have happened and the results in such a situation could have been awful.

Apart from the preceding, the actual flight was good and there was a nice landing at R. L. Bradshaw International Airport on St. Kitts.  By then we were at least 1 hour and 20 minutes late with our arrival.

Return to St. Martin

The check-in area in the terminal was essentially deserted with no one at the Winair counter.  After waiting awhile, we finally stopped a passing airport worker and asked if she knew where the Winair agent might be (it was getting uncomfortably close to our departure time).  She said she would find him and away she went.  The agent appeared after a few minutes and was pleasant enough.  We noticed the monitor behind him indicated our flight was leaving considerably later than its scheduled time and asked about that.  He nonchalantly responded "That thing's never right - just ignore it."  Meanwhile he kept struggling with his computer terminal and printer trying to produce our boarding passes with no success.  After about 10 minutes of that he did what appeared to us to be a "reboot" and finally was able to generate the needed documents.

As we waited in the terminal departure area it was obvious there would be comparatively few passengers for the return flight which was to be at 4:10pm.  We chatted a bit with a nice young couple who seemed to have been visiting St. Kitts for business purposes.  The plane was basically on time and away we went for a stop on Nevis.  There was nothing unusual about the very brief flight over to Nevis and the subsequent landing.  Some passengers deplaned and we quickly were on our way to St. Martin.

As we flew along we went through heavy clouds with rain and in the distance could see much more ominous looking black ones swirling away.  As we neared St. Martin we broke out of the clouds and it was quite clear all around us.  At Juliana the pilot started descending toward the runway on a course we would have expected and then did an extremely odd maneuver in which he rotated out and away from the airport.  He did a large loop and then we found ourselves flying down the coast of Simpson Bay toward SunSet Beach Bar.  As we were literally immediately over SSBB he suddenly banked extremely hard to the right and shoved the nose down in an incredibly tight turn.  The automated alarms in the cockpit were going nuts and all we could hear was "Pull up!  Pull up!  Pull up!" as we seemed to dive at an even steeper angle.  We hit the runway hard, very hard at much too sharp an angle and for one awful moment felt certain the plane was going to flip.  The pilot with brakes screaming and engines reversing managed to get the nose up and the tail down.  We've flown many, many times island hopping around the Caribbean in all manner of planes including one piece of ramshackle junk that stalled during a landing in Negril, Jamaica and we've never had such a frightening moment as on this Winair flight.  It made no sense whatsoever.

When the plane stopped there was total silence in the cabin - everyone was frozen and there was no movement nor sound to be heard.  After a moment we looked back toward the entrance way and saw the young couple we mentioned earlier sitting on the rear bench seat.  She had her legs tightly drawn up against her chest with arms wrapped around them in a perfect fetal position and her eyes were extremely wide staring straight ahead.  Her companion looked like he had fainted - he was just limply sprawled out looking at the ceiling.  Ed asked them if they were OK and they seemed to slowly come out of a trance like state.  The girl then said she was terrified and was certain during the landing that she was going to die.  She then went on to say they had flown Winair on over 100 trips and had never encountered anything remotely like this.  We all slowly and unsteadily exited the plane and saw the pilots happily chit chatting with the ground crew as if nothing unusual had transpired.  There was no comment to the passengers - not so much as a "Sorry about that" or even a facetious "Wasn't that fun?"

The whole thing was so surreal and we believe so totally unnecessary.

Our legs still felt weak as we stood in the terminal arrival hall trying to compose ourselves enough to complete the Immigration forms which Winair had not been kind enough to provide beforehand.  Do you get the impression we were more than a little perturbed with Winair?  We hope so.