Jason Wordie looks back at yesterday’s travel. This month, it's 1998 and the closure of Hong Kong Kai Tak airport
Those who travelled to Hong Kong before July 1998 will remember one of the planet’s most dramatic landings at Kai Tak, the international airport for more than six decades. It was located in Kowloon, one of the city’s two major urban areas, across Victoria Harbour from the main island.
After steadily descending over sea and islands on the usual western approach, aircraft skimmed across Sham Shui Po’s densely crowded apartment buildings, banked above Kowloon Tong and powered down over Kowloon City.
By then, aircraft were only a few hundred feet above the rooftops – you could almost peer into the kitchen windows below. TV aerials were barely skimmed and then moments later, touchdown, with the harbour directly alongside the aircraft windows.
Residents around Kai Tak lived in crammed quarters. Two generations of children from nearby buildings did their homework in the arrivals and departures hall. Air conditioned in summer, the terminal was less crowded and cooler than at home.
After the government took over the airport from the Abbot School of Aviation in 1927, Kai Tak opened to military and limited civilian traffic, primarily serving the Royal Air Force.
The first tarmac runway – which ran east-west – opened in 1939 and was later extended by the Japanese during occupation. An ambitious harbour extension was constructed in the mid-1950s, opening to long-range jets in 1958.
Today’s Chek Lap Kok is a paragon of gleaming efficiency, but it just isn’t the same as exciting, grotty old Kai Tak.
