Light Aircraft Landing at Kai Tak, 2 November 1993

I was recently reminded of my days flying light aircraft in Hong Kong. I learned to fly here and was probably one of the last students to do circuits at Kai Tak. That was certainly because I was flying with our Chief Flying Instructor at the time and it was a relatively quiet Easter Saturday morning at Kai Tak in 1993.

I secured my licence in January 1994 and was a very active pilot for 15 years. I often took friends, colleagues and clients for flights around Hong Kong. On 2 November 1994, I took a colleague flying and he filmed parts of it. Of possible interest is the segment he filmed while we landed back at Kai Tak.

The approach for light aircraft to land at Kai Tak was obviously very different to the large jets, and we had two holding points: one circling between North Point and Star Ferry over the harbour ("not above 500 feet", mind you!) and the other circling over Kwun Tong, which could get rather bumpy! The clip starts just as we leave the holding point over Kwun Tong and ends with us waiting to cross Runway 13 to return to the Aviation Club.