Maho Beach lies directly beneath the approach to Princess Juliana International Airport, whose runway starts just across a single road from the sand — so every arriving airliner crosses the beach barely 30 meters overhead before touching down. Geography forced the arrangement: St. Maarten was too hilly for a long runway, so in 1942 the US military laid one on the narrow sandbar between the sea and Simpson Bay Lagoon, and the strip has been boxed in ever since. With open water at its threshold, pilots hold a low final approach, and wide-bodies clear the perimeter fence by what looks — and sometimes is — only a few dozen meters, engines roaring over the heads of sunbathers. For decades the signature sight was a KLM Boeing 747 filling the sky; that scheduled jumbo service ended in October 2016, but jets from a dozen airlines still make the same pass every day.
A crowd gathers at the fence for every scheduled arrival, phones raised, while others wait knee-deep in the turquoise shallows for a shadow to sweep overhead. Departures are the real hazard: jet blast from planes powering up at the runway threshold can fling a grown adult off their feet, and in 2017 a woman holding the fence was killed when the wash threw her against concrete — the reason for the beach's blunt warning signs. Between flights, Maho is an ordinary, lovely Caribbean beach of calm, clear water and a row of bars, chief among them the Sunset Bar & Grill. Hurricane Irma destroyed the airport terminal in 2017; a rebuilt one opened in 2024, but the low landings never stopped, and the sand still draws plane-spotters from around the world.