St. Maarten Private Eye

As a student pilot, aviation enthusiast and long time SXM vacationer, I would like to offer my perspective. I have also consulted with a friend of mine who is a widebody A340 & 744 captain who saw the video and concurs with the following opinion.

The video in question involves a standard missed approach or go-around procedure. This can be for any number of reasons and is perfectly reasonable and expected if there is an unsafe condition that would prevent a safe landing and such a condition was noticed prior to the decision height. The SXM decision height is 500 feet to my knowledge. Without the ATC tapes, we can only speculate as to what was said, but from the video it is reasonable to assume that:

1) prior to decision height, the KLM crew elected to go-around and conduct a missed approach. Reason: runway was not clear of aircraft.
2) The decision to go-around was correct. The reason why the decision height exists, among others, is to provide a fixed point where the flight crew says "yes or no" to a landing.
3) With regard to ATC, there could be several reasons why the Corsair 747 was given clearance to line up and take off, most likely due to congestion at SXM. While 2 747s at the same time is rare (KLM and Corsair are the only 747 operators on the island) there are dozens and dozens of smaller aircraft that operate at SXM every day. The Corsair flight may have been waiting for some time and the ATC elected to have them departure priority, even if it meant having the KLM to go-around. This is likely due to the fact that Corsair conducted a rolling takeoff, meaning that ATC would have likely stated "no delay, cleared for takeoff, keep it rolling" or something to that effect

4) Finally, it is important to note that what looks like a major event on the video is in fact another day at the office for the crew. In that situation, it was simply an issue of them carrying out procedure and that ATC did not do anything improper. Remember, if there had been no one on the runway and KLM had something as little as a bad feeling about the approach they could have gone around without any other reason than their own professional judgement.

5) SXM is the best piece of paradise in the world and I look forward to the next time I am there.