Living near Midway Airport, this doesn’t seem like a stretch at all to me. They don’t quite come in that low, but it’s not that far off, either. (Plus I’ve seen a gazillion videos of this approach to St Maarten, so I know it’s almost certainly real.)
OK thanks for the answers, I’m seriously impressed/a little bit horrified that that pic is real!
1997 isn’t that old. That’s when the plane was delivered. It’s an Airbus A340.
Here’s another shot of the same plane at St. Maarten.
It seems odd to think it’s been photoshopped when there are probably thousands of legitimate pictures of the same thing (different times and planes, of course).
It does look pretty low. You’re not allowed to land on the first part of the tarmac and ideally you’d be about 50 feet as you go over the piano keys. There does seem to be some crews who like to be extra low on short final there, I think there is footage of a KLM B747 landing just before the piano keys. There’s no real excuse for it, there appears to be visual approach path lights either side of the aiming point markers. In my company we’d get a “please explain” phone call from the safety department.
That’s nearly 20 years ago. That’s like a lifetime in Internet years!
Dad! That plane stole my volleyball!
And it’s more recent than that because it has an Air France-KLM logo on the nose. Air France-KLM didn’t exist until 2004, and the plane was leased to Finnair in 2010, so it’s from sometime between 2004 and 2010.
It’s at least a few years old - that beach is no longer clear sand. It’s been covered with a layer of large rocks (foot+ diameter, not gravel), I believe to discourage people hanging out in the jet blast area.
Just out of morbid curiosity -
Without some form of military hardware - just how hard would it be to cause some form of “irretrievable problem” to a landing plane if you were positioned on the beach?
There doesn’t appear to be any form of security - and someone dumb enough with a wish for infamy could equal a serious problem?
ISTM all they’d need is a jet blast deflector and that would put a stop to it. I bet they could even get a plexiglass one so people could still stand back there and see the planes.
I can only assume that, barring a fatality or horrible accident, they’ll just keep putting up unenforced signs since standing in the jet blast is at least one of the reasons why people come there.
St. Maartan isn’t part of the sue-happy U.S. It is obvious what the risks are and their own fault if the get hurt from it. I would love to experience myself but I accept full responsibility if I get thrown into the ocean like a rag-doll from the back-blast from the jet propulsion. That is the whole point of being on that stretch of beach. It isn’t like someone hid the fact that there will be large airliners coming in directly above you if you choose to hang out there.
Anyone could move 100 yards off to either side if they didn’t want that risk but of course they don’t because they do. The lack of protection is the draw for people that want that rare experience.
I can think of several quite simple methods of destroying the plane as it lands and seriously endangering those on board. I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to go into details, even though any other idiot like me could figure it out.
I dunno - I was aware of the place and had watched the videos etc before, but it did occur to me to wonder if this specific example had been shopped/enhanced by merely dropping the plane down a bit.
Well, regarding the photo itself you can just check shadow angles, if you check the angle between the plane’s nose and its shadow and compare with that of the people on the beach they are pretty much the same (there’s a little slope on the beach so they will not be exactly the same).
If the plane would had been shifted down for the lolz the angle of the shadow would be more acute than that of other things in the photo. Unless the shadow would had been retouched which would be a whole lot more difficult than just moving the plane down.
So no, just by looking at the photograph (and not even taking into account that those sort of landing approaches are well documented) it is not a fake.
Well yeah - I can also imagine some relatively simple ways to destroy a plane in flight that is so close.
That it hasn’t been done, or that security is still apparently so lax made me wonder though - is it really as easy at looks, or is it rather more difficult than one would expect?
I was there in 2000. The view from the plane is every bit as insane, and I was convinced we were headed for the drink until we had stopped.
Coincidentally, I was telling my daughter about it today.
St Maarten/St Martin is half Dutch, half French. There is a chalkboarded surfboard at the Sunset Beachbar listing the take offs and landings of all big planes (small planes are in and out constantly).
The big AirFrance planes seem to “show off” out of national pride. On takeoff they “rev” their engines longer than similarly sized US planes. They attract more fans then any of the other planes.
Air France and KLM have merged haven’t they? Do they still maintain separate staffing?
