Kai Tak Attack (1991)

Those who flew into Hong Kong airport before it was relocated fall into two main categories - those who recall a dazzling sense of elation, others who remember only a cold numbing of the senses. This is a piece I wrote after my first landing at Kai Tak Airport. Sadly it is no longer possible to experience what I describe here.

Much has been written about the thrill of arriving in Hong Kong by air, and much of it is reassuring. The planes are brought in by computer; there is no longer any room for pilot error; you’re as safe as houses. Yet, re-assurances notwithstanding, all the signs are there that it will be one hairy ride. For a start, the twin cities of Hong Kong and Kowloon lie perched either side of Victoria Harbour, their buildings reaching into the sky like giant glass monoliths teetering on the edge of the South China Sea. Kai Tak Airport is on the Kowloon side and, when you first glimpse it, the runway, which protrudes into a tiny bay surrounded by huge apartment blocks, seems impossibly narrow, a stick on a millpond. Viewed this way, it looks barely wide enough to fit a single car between its downward sloping shoulders, let alone a 747 with up to five-hundred people on board. Not much farther than the end of the runway, on the other side of the terminal buildings, are the hills, rising sharp and precipitous, their face like a wall. They are dark brown and ominous, and, viewed from the air, they make the airport seem like a toy city, a set from Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet. As you approach Kai Tak, you wonder how you’re ever going to get in there between all those buildings. But you settle into the final descent, and then it seems that you might just continue on right through the heart of the great city, gliding precariously between apartment blocks and commercial houses. You imagine the pilots wincing and covering their faces, the stewardesses holding their breath. And you think that you can always tell the Hong Kong residents, those who have done this before – they’re the ones who are most frightened, they’re gripping the armrests of their seats and refusing to look out the windows. On the face of it, it seems highly unlikely that you will ever get down safely.

My own initiation into the Kai Tak Club (my own invention) came on a late Sunday evening at the end of April. We came in on a Cathay Pacific 747 from Melbourne, over the South China Sea. I pressed my nose up against the window and all I could see was a black expanse, a nothing void, we might as well have been on our way to the moon. The dark was total. Black, immeasurable and complete. A deep well of blackness extending downwards from the belly of the plane, cutting its icy way through the centre of the earth. You could easily believe that you, along with your traveling companions, were the only living beings in existence, the rest of humanity having perished in some unthinkable calamity.

The South China Sea, spilling over with history, supporting its own mythology, both factual and literary. Not least the terrifying ordeal of the crew and passengers of Conrad’s steamer Nan-Shan, the ship tossed from one colossal wave to the next like so much scrap paper. “The seas in the dark,” Conrad wrote in Typhoon, “seemed to rush from all sides”. Imagine it. The ship threatening to come apart. Creaking, groaning, sighing. Cracking, splintering, snapping. Every sound making you think its going to pieces. White-tipped waves two, three times as tall as the main-mast, crashing across the foredeck, swamping the decks, the forecastle disappearing for moments at a time inside walls of water. Two hundred Chinese coolies, returning home from making their fortunes in foreign lands, seeing their gold coins bursting from their strongboxes, believing they’re about to lose their fortunes, suddenly on the verge of revolt. As if the storm wasn’t bad enough. And then the crew.

Captain MacWhirr and Jukes kept hold of each other, deafened by the noise, gagged by the wind; and the great physical tumult beating about their bodies, brought, like an unbridled display of passion, a profound trouble to their souls. One of those wild and appalling shrieks that are heard at times passing mysteriously overhead in the steady roar of a hurricane, swooped, as if borne on wings, upon the ship, and Jukes tried to outscream it.

I know where I’d rather be. Conrad had his “wild and appalling shrieks”; I had Elgar’s Cello Concerto thrumming via the headphones into my ears, Conrad’s Victory lying in my lap with a thumb to keep the page, a Coke, its surface registering only the slightest of vibrations, within too easy reach. Conrad, had he been sitting next to me instead of the elderly Chinese couple who could speak no words of English but who smiled a great deal and spoke to each other in friendly murmurs, might have accused me of being soft, a lily-liver, a woman’s blouse. “Where,” he might have asked, “is your sense of adventure?” (For some reason, though I know he was Polish, whenever I think of Conrad speaking I always hear Sean Connery’s voice.) I, of course, would have told him, “At least I have a decent chance of reaching Hong Kong alive!”

Suddenly there they were. Abruptly. Like they’d risen out of the dark ocean. Thrust upwards by some frightful beast inhabiting the dark abyss. The lights of Hong Kong. The city, its height and breadth, outlined in numerous millions of coloured globes. It was enough to take my breath away. Surely it was one of the most beautiful sights on earth, this oasis of gold and white surrounded by a dense void. The sheer skyscrapers of Hong Kong’s financial district crowding together, looking like the severed legs of iron and glass robots marching from the Peak all the way down to the waterfront where they ended brusquely, chopped off by the hand of an enormous foul-breathed ogre straight out of Chinese folklore. It was magnificent, awe-inspiring, unexpected. Literally millions had witnessed the same sight and would again, but it made no difference to me. I felt like the luckiest man alive.

Though I couldn’t see it, I knew that somewhere dead ahead was the famous Chequerboard I’d read about, large red and white squares on an almost perpendicular hillside, a signal for approaching aircraft. “It’s a tricky spot,” Gavin Young wrote in Beyond Lion Rock: The Story of Cathay Pacific Airways, “so tricky in fact that you can’t even trust electronics.” I thought about this as we made our final approach. How the pilots aren’t allowed to rely on their instruments, it isn’t even feasible to do so. “The final turn to the runway must be visual.” Because we were about to set down in the heart of a modern densely-populated city, falling to earth on Runway 13, a straight narrow strip of concrete extending out into Kowloon Bay.

We were descending rapidly now. Yet there was no airport in sight. Only the magnificently lit city and beyond that the hills rising very steep and devilish. It occurred to me that if we were to overshoot the runway there would be nowhere for us to go. My fingers tightened around the armrests. What was it I would have said to Conrad? As the city drew us in it seemed more and more like an idle boast.

Our quick descent took us past ubiquitous foul-looking apartment blocks, their concrete walls despoiled by the breathless watery climate, TV aerials sprouting from the roofs. Nothing I’d read quite prepared me for the heart-jolting moment when I realised the top floor windows of the apartments were now above me – yet looking down I still could not see the runway, just the dark oily waters of Kowloon Bay perilously close to the engines, waiting to pull us under. People leaned out windows, hanging washing on lines strung between buildings. A woman was preparing supper; a family huddled around a television set. Some watched us go by; others ignored our passing – to them, incredibly, we were nothing out of the ordinary.

You have to admire the adaptability of the human spirit. These people are born, grow up, fall in love, get married, and raise families in this city in the sky. I could imagine children learning to identify every airline logo, while their parents told the time with each passing flight, in much the same way people living close to railway lines tell the time of day by the sound of an approaching train. Cathay Pacific? Must be almost time for bed.

The water threatened beneath us. For all we knew we might never reach landfall, but instead end up swimming for our lives in Kowloon Bay. Closer to the runway our speed seemed to increase, though this was only an illusion, for while you’re up in the air you have nothing to relate your speed to. Another frantic moment came when we skimmed past large cargo ships and oil tankers – their running lights made them look like vast floating Christmas trees – and I could see the crests of their radio masts only by looking up. In my mind the hill beyond the airport loomed even larger. My fingers dug into the arms of my seat. I fixed my eyes on the window and watched the world flash by. One, two, three, I counted off the seconds, waiting, waiting, thinking, Surely we should have landed by now!

Then, abruptly, after what was the dullest of thuds, the 747 began to shake and shudder and I could hear the loud whine – the “wild and appalling shrieks” again – of the engines’ reverse thrust. My body pressed against the seat belt, carried forward by momentum, even as the plane rapidly slowed, as if caught in that giant’s firm hand. I sighed with relief. Almost laughed out loud. I felt like shouting, We’re down! We made it! I had the sense I had overcome some great hurdle, achieved something significant. It was like the best kind of fairground attraction, leaving me hot and sweaty, and more than a little exhilarated. My legs felt numb, and my thoughts were racing, but I’d done it. Later, standing outside the plane, I thought that the ground under my feet had never felt better.

(The magnificent photograph of a 747 on its final approach to Kai Tak is used with the kind permission of Ian Woodrow, a UK-based photographer. More fine examples of Ian's work can be found at airliners.net.)