'The landing approach using runway 13 at Kai Tak was spectacular and world-famous. To land on runway 13, an aircraft first took a descent heading northeast. The aircraft would pass over the crowded harbour, and then the very densely populated areas on Western Kowloon.

Upon reaching a small hill marked with a checkerboard in red and white, used as a visual reference point on the final approach, the pilot needed to make a 47° visual right turn to line up with the runway and complete the final leg.

 The aircraft would be just two nautical miles (3.7 km) from touchdown, at a height of less than 1,000 feet (300 m) when the turn was made. Typically the plane would enter the final right turn at the height of about 650 feet (200 m) and exit it at the height of 140 feet (43 m) to line up with the runway.

Landing by the runway 13 approach was already difficult with normal crosswinds since even if the wind direction was constant, as it was changing relative to the airplane when the 47° visual right turn is being made. The landing would become even more challenging when crosswinds from the northeast were strong and gusty during typhoons.

 The mountain range northeast of the airport also makes wind vary greatly in both speed and direction; thus, varying the lift of the airplane. From a spectator's point of view, watching large Boeing 747s banking at low altitudes and taking big crab angles during their final approaches was quite thrilling. Despite the difficulty, it was nonetheless used most of the time due to the prevailing wind direction in Hong Kong.

Due to the turn in the final approach, the assistance of the Instrument Landing System was not available for runway 13 and landings had to follow a visual approach. This made the runway unusable in low visibility conditions.' [end of Wikipedia extract]

"For the passenger the landing was no less exciting.   It was daylight when we landed, and the aerobatics described above we could see and feel.   The final right turn  was truly amazing as we could see the residents of high rise apartments near the airport looking down at us as we were lining up for the final approach!

Clearly, there are two categories of airline pilots, those who have landed at Kai Tak and those who have not!   Kai Tak Airport is no longer in use.

The day after our arrival an eleven hour jet-lagged sleep was disturbed by an almighty bang.   It was midday and our hotel room, in the Excelsior, directly overlooked  the noon-day gun which had just been fired!

I watched the noon-day gun routine one day.   Precisely at 11.00 a.m. a gentleman wearing  a blue boiler suit opened the railings surrounding the artillery piece.   For fifty-five minutes he oiled, dusted, wiped and polished every mechanism of the gun and went through the pre-firing procedure.   Then, at 11.55a.m., in something like the scene where James Bond peels off his wetsuit to reveal a tuxedo, the operative shed his boiler suit and emerged in a gleaming white naval suit which was then topped by a white peaked naval cap.   For four minutes he stood to attention behind the gun and at precisely 12 noon, he rang the warning bell and pulled the cord to fire the gun.

That was not our only encounter with explosives in Hong Kong.   One afternoon, while the ladies were indulging in some serious retail therapy in Kowloon, a Scottish colleague and I took the Mountain tram to Victoria Peak, the highest point on Hong Kong Island.

It was a glorious clear day and one could spend hours watching the ferries to Kowloon, the almost anarchic shipping traffic between  island and mainland and the aerobatic displays of the aircraft coming in to Kai Tak Airport.   We then went into the cafeteria near the tram station and took delivery of some ice-cream sundaes.

We had hardly eaten a scoop each of our ice-creams when a policeman entered and ordered the evacuation of the building as an unexploded World War II bomb had just been discovered by construction workers at the nearby tram-station.   The policeman then went to clear another area.

My colleague and I took stock of the situation.   We  analysed the odds available that an Irishman and a Scotsman would be blown to smithereens on Hong Kong Island by a bomb dropped in December 1941.   We decided that the odds were sufficiently long for us to finish our ice-creams first!

The bomb was viable and was detonated at sea the next day!

The most hazardous part of that day was not the bomb scare, but the journey back down from Victoria Peak.   The tram station was closed, and a double-decker bus was substituted.   It was clear that the driver's horoscope that morning had been unsettling and that he did not share our reckoning of the odds.   He drove down through the S-bends, U-Bends and hairpin bends as though he was firmly convinced that the bomb was going to explode and that we would be buried in the subsequent landslide"

Your visit to Hong Kong could be no less eventful.   Why not contact us if you are considering a journey to any destination in the Far East.

Hong Kong is a truly extraordinary experience of a destination with a split personality.   It is now Chinese, but with a British tradition.   A Chinese citizen requires a visa for a visit in excess of fourteen days in Hong Kong.   That would be similar to an Irish citizen requiring a visa to stay on the Aran Islands off Galway!   However, these were the arrangements that were negotiated when Hong Kong became an autonomous Special Administrative Region in the Peoples' Republic of China.