A St. Maarten-based live streamer and ex-airplane mechanic says he’s never witnessed something as disruptive as the hard landing of a WestJet plane that shut down the runway at the Caribbean island’s iconic airport.
Jacco Steffens, co-founder of content and streaming website SHOWME Caribbean, said he was remotely operating a web camera pointed at St. Maarten’s Princess Juliana International Airport and streaming on YouTube as usual on Sunday.
That was until he went to zoom into the landing of WestJet flight WS2276 from Toronto at around 1 p.m. ET.
“I said, ‘Something ain’t right,’” Steffens recalled.
An archived live stream of the airport’s runway on Sunday captured by Steffen’s webcam shows the moment the WestJet flight made its final approach. The plane can be seen flying low over bright blue waters before landing roughly on its right landing gear and coming to a stop.
“I thought first that it probably just busted a tire or something, but then when I saw it sliding and the smoke was coming up, I realized that the engine was on the ground, so it was more than a blown tire,” he said.
The airport said on Sunday that 164 people were on board the WestJet Boeing 737-800 and three of them were taken for medical assessment after a safe evacuation.
It said contact with the runway caused damage to the plane’s right wing and a video the airport published online appeared to show collapsed landing gear on the right side. WestJet said Sunday that foam was deployed as a precaution and the plane’s slides were activated for the evacuation.
As someone who has worked at the airport for over 40 years, Steffans said the hard landing caught him off guard as the plane’s runway approach seemed normal to him.
“For the airport to be closed for 24 hours, I haven’t see that or heard about that ever,” he said.
The airport announced shortly before 2:30 p.m. on Monday that the runway had reopened and normal operations resumed, after all flights had been halted.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said Monday it is sending a team of investigators to St. Maarten to look into the rough landing and assess what happened.
WestJet said it is “fully co-operating” with local authorities and plans to provide updates as more information becomes available.
Steffens said travel to St. Maarten is currently in its low season, with significantly fewer planes arriving at the international airport than during the winter months. In 2023, the airport saw more than 1.4 million passengers.
Princess Juliana Airport is famous for its proximity to Maho Beach, located on the western edge of the airport where beachgoers can gawk at planes making their final runway approaches above the white sand and clear waters.
“You can almost touch the wheels when it’s landing,” Steffens said, adding that the beach is a popular destination for aviation buffs and tourists alike.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2025.
