There’s been a lot in the news lately about the unrest in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has always been just about my most favorite city. So you probably figure that today’s blog is going to be about Hong Kong… well, not exactly. Today’s topic is airports. My first time in Hong Kong was in the 1960s. My first flight into the city was on Cathay Pacific airways. I had dosed off and woke up during the landing — when I looked out the window I was literally eye-to eye with a woman hanging laundry on the balcony of an apartment building. If any of you have landed at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak International Airport, you know exactly what I mean — if you haven’t, it’s almost impossible to imagine what it was like.
I should probably pause here and let you know, or remind you that the Kai Tak airport closed about 20 years ago. Today, Hong Kong’s main airport is generally known simply as Hong Kong International Airport. It was built a distance from downtown on reclaimed land on the island of Chek Lap Kok. The airport is also referred to as Chek Lap Kok International Airport or Chek Lap Kok Airport, to distinguish it from its predecessor, Kai Tak Airport.
But back to what was my favorite airport in my favorite city. Kai Tak was built in 1925 on reclaimed land in Kowloon Bay, opposite Hong Kong Island. It sat in a bowl, surrounded by mountains and water — later untold number of apartment buildings sprung up around it. In 1958, with demand on the airport increasing, a new runway was built. For those into airplane/airport talk — it was Runway 13/31. The runway jutted out into Victoria Harbor, and it soon earned the nickname “Kai Tak Heart Attack.”
Kai Tak was probably one of the last major airports where ILS (Instrument Landing Systems) weren’t/couldn’t be used. Pilots had to be trained to to get into and out of the airport and had to rely on basic flying skills — not instruments. Landing on Runway 13/31 meant making an approach across Victoria Harbor (one of the world’s busiest ports) and densely populated Kowloon. The pilot had to visually find “Checkerboard Hill” (an orange and white painted marker above a park.) Then the pilot had to veer right, making a 47 degree turn at low altitude (and about 200 miles an hour.) This maneuver was made just two miles from the runway — after that, the aircraft flew over/between apartment buildings and busy streets to get to the runway.
Departures had their own challenges. the runway was short, and once off the ground, the aircraft had to turn sharply to avoid Beacon Hill and Lion Rock, two mountains each about 1600 feet high.
Landing in Hong Kong was like nothing I’d ever experienced before — and never have since.
While we’re on the subject of airports, on my first flight to La Paz, in Bolivia, the pilot announced that we were starting our ascent to the airport — not descent, but ascent. It turns out that El Alto International Airport is the highest international airport, and the sixth highest commercial airport tin the world. After I thought about this, I looked it up and the airport sits at an altitude of 13, 325 feet. It doesn’t fit into the same category of “favorites” as Hong Kong, but because of its altitude, it falls into one of my “unique” flying experiences.
Just a side note… while checking on the altitude of the airport in La Paz, I discovered that the highest airport in the world is Daocheng Yading Airport, located in China’s Sichuan province — it’s almost three miles above sea level. I’ve never been there, but I expect you have fly up to land there, too.
I’ve heard that much of who we are is where we’ve been — I think maybe that also applies to how we got there….
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