St. Maarten popular
The fact that airlines are allowing people to book tickets although the green light has not been given by the St. Maarten government to execute commercial flights show how popular and in demand St. Maarten is as a tourist destination.
Airlines are always threatening to pull out of St. Maarten citing lagging sales and bookings as an excuse to force the government and tourism stakeholders to fork over seat guarantees and other marketing incentives to continue servicing the destination with their flights.
Now renowned airlines such as KLM and American Airlines are succumbing to the apparently insatiable demand by customers to quickly open back up the destination in their reservation systems for bookings despite the fact that no official date has been set for a reopening of the airport.
The Princess Juliana International Airport has to meet various safety and operational regulations before it can handle commercial flights and these airline companies know this better than anyone else. People have to be made aware that dispatchers and pilots of these airlines will not be operating flights into SXM Airport until it is certified as ready for commercial flights by ICAO and the local civil aviation authorities no matter what the Sales and Marketing departments of these airline companies might be telling the general public in order to get their monies into their airline company coffers.