Jumbo Jet Makes Its Last Run of 'World's Scariest Landing' in St. Maarten
KLM has served the beaches of St. Maarten with a Boeing 747 for 26 years.
— -- For 26 years, a tropical paradise has been home to one of the world's scariest and most exhilarating landings in the world. Today, that era came to an end.
The last KLM Boeing 747 touched down in St. Maarten at 11:03 a.m. ET today.
Since 1990, Dutch airline KLM has served beach goers hair-raising landings as their jumbo jets soared at low altitudes over the sandy coast and onto the runways at Princess Juliana International Airport.
Going forward, the route to St. Maarten will be served by Airbus A330s, seating 243 passengers, as oppose to the 408 passengers that fit into the Boeing 747.
The flight from Amsterdam used to make a stop to drop off passengers in Curacao in addition to St. Maarten.
After today, Curacao and St. Maarten will be served independently, without any intermediate stopovers.
The Curacao route will still use a Boeing 747.
Flying the route directly to St. Maarten will save passengers over 4 hours in traveling time, a spokeswoman for KLM told ABC News.
KLM will now fly three direct flights a week from Amsterdam to St. Maarten and seven to Curacao.
Aviation enthusiasts have dubbed the experience as one of the world's scariest landings and will certainly be lamenting the end of an era.