AirSXM News

Printed in AirSXM News, Tue 26-Oct-2004

AirSXM welcomes Exel's flights to St. Maarten from December 19th

PHILIPSBURG--Dutch Caribbean Exel will start flying from Amsterdam to St. Maarten starting Sunday, December 19th, management announced yesterday. This news has been well received by AirSXM as it offers relief for the large number of passengers wanting to travel to St. Maarten for the Christmas period.

A similar Boeing 767-300ER (Extended Range) will be used by DutchCaribbeanExel to fly to St. Maarten

The flight leaves Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at 2:00pm local time and arrives in St. Maarten at 6:15pm. It will leave St. Maarten again at 7:30pm and return via Curaçao, where it will refuel, to Schiphol where the flight arrives at 12:30pm local time.

DutchCaribbeanExel currently executes two weekly flights Amsterdam-Curaçao-Amsterdam. In December this will increase to three times per week and possibly a fourth flight will be added. These flights are booked solid, also because of the relatively low air fare.

Fully booked KLM-Air France flights on the route Amsterdam-St. Maarten has been a problem, especially after the problems and subsequent bankruptcy of DCA earlier this month. AirSXM has been lobbying for extra capacity to St. Maarten from Amsterdam during the past weeks. Martinair offered a solution by making a stop in St. Maarten on it's Amsterdam-Miami route. However working with a double crew posed such considerable scheduling problems that this was not a viable solution.

The bankruptcy of DCA meant that passengers who were booked with the airline had to be rebooked with another carrier. But this has proven to be disappointing for many customers as the only available seats on KLM or Air France were simply too expensive. As an example, the total fare for a family of five came up to over 18.000 euro with KLM during the Christmas and New Year's season.

With the added airlift into St. Maarten from Amsterdam provided by Exel many customers will be happy to know that they can spend Christmas in St. Maarten with their family and friends which is a most welcomed development and applauded by AirSXM. Click here to book now!

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