I first visited St Maarten over 20 years ago, landing in a Lufthansa DC-10 which was an experience landing and taking off. We had a slightly longer transit due to a small technical issue and so I decided to excuse myself and go for a walk for a couple of hours, which took me to Maho Beach. There were few people, better beaches elsewhere and the bar was only really busy in the late afternoon/evenings and seemed to be a haunt of taxi drivers waiting for particular flights to bring customers. Very easy going and a hidden gem. I remember telling a friend on returning to Europe about the location who poo-pooed my story until the film I took was developed a few days later. He worked for a magazine company in France and, perhaps by chance, perhaps not a few photos of AF 747's landing appeared some months later and it became better known.
Cue internet and thousands of photos, you tubes, blogs, and Maho Beach has become a destination in it's own right for tourists (and the odd aviation enthusiast) who want to be close up with landing aircraft. As mentioned, the majority of airliners land with a margin to spare, no doubt due to rigorous SOP's, a few of the 747's have a tougher time with the margin in certain conditions due to their size, but there does seem to be a bit of 'hot-dogging' by some of the smaller biz jets and non-airline aircraft seemingly wanting to gain a bit of notoriety on social media. All well and good, as as long as they don't land before the threshold, it's within the rules, but as can be seen from one of these above films (can't remember which one) the distance from the Embraer's wheels and the roof the moving blue/grey taxi is very small, as with a few of the thrill seeker's heads. They are adults and are willing to trade their lives against the thrill of close contact with a fast moving loud flying machine. For me, with these lower landing craft the risk is too great and at some point the holes in the cheese will translate to holes in heads. Airshows are tame compared with yesteryear, which is a crying shame, but in saying that the number of spectators who lost their lives and others terribly injured when things did go wrong in the past seems to be no more.
SHJ