Kai Tak district-What was there before, Daddy?

There are people in Hong Kong today heading for middle age, whose memories of Kai Tak airport will have faded away or have none at all. 

Improbably it has been left to the MTR at its Kai Tak station’s pedestrian subways to leave them in wonder comparing the displays of aviation photographs of early Kai Tack, to the developments in progress above and around them on the airport’s site.

Few traces of the airport exist unless you are ‘in-the-know,’ including, what was on the land before the Cruise Ship Terminal was built? Sticking out into the harbour as it does. 

Even here, on my last look, only a couple of runway numbers on the ground at the seaward end were all that was visible and these probably not authentic. An empty shell of a redundant GFS aircraft sat on grass as background for “wedding pictures."

The Aviation Club exists at the corner of the airport’s 1960s site as a remnant of private/club flying as it used to be at Kai Tak, courtesy of the Far East Flying Training School, whose original buildings are still in use today. Although there is no flying, even by small helicopters.

Several airport-related road names survive and their signage, but they will mean very little to new residents to the area.

Checkerboard Hill, actually a reservoir, with its distinctive slab-side faces painted with red and white squares gave passengers on the north side of their airliner a sudden view of the sky while gripping their seatbelts as they ‘banked’ towards the runway. Meanwhile glancing to the opposite side's windows, seeing the tops of buildings and the mythical “TV screens” seemingly touching the lower wing tip. Some airliners followed a gentle banking curve to the runway’s threshold while others, with pilots of no doubt military backgrounds, took delight in creating a sharp ‘flick’ turn, drastically increasing the angle of ‘bank’ to the chagrin of passengers. 

After Kai Tak’s closure, the checkerboard disappeared through neglect into undergrowth but was magically restored. It now appears to be a popular “selfie” location to the extent that safety handrailing has been installed to prevent “selfie” followers experiencing unexpected excursions into the park below.

Whilst there were initiatives in the late 1990s to create permanent public memories of the old airport. Taking over one of the HAECO hangars for informative displays including actual aircraft was one. An installation marked ‘museum’ at the end of the runway did appear on some town planning diagrams at the seaward’s extremity. All and any ideas went into oblivion.

On my last visit to the Museum of History in TST East before it was closed for refurbishment, there was not one mention of Kai Tak and its function as “The Crossroads of the World’s Aviation Routes” as extolled in 1930s-1950s international press articles. But the museum does at least hold the personal photographic album of an early senior employee of the Far East Flying Training School in the 1930s. Although few people will be aware of it. 

Meanwhile, the nearby Museum of Science exhibits Cathy Pacific’s genuine first aircraft, a Douglas C47 Dakota ex-military aircraft christened Betsy, hanging from the ceiling, neglected up in the air. I was told a few years ago that its cabin was being used to store museum detritus, and the exhibit being effectively “walled in”, makes its removal highly improbable unless structural walls are demolished. 

Recognizing this, at least Cathy Pacific has made the effort to recreate its past by exhibiting another Douglas C47 Dakota in its company’s markings. Albeit, outside its headquarters at Cathy City and subjected to the prevailing weather, adjacent to Hong Kong International Airport. This was rescued from the Philippines but has no previous Hong Kong or Cathy Pacific background.

Hong Kong has its transport-related Maritime Museum and Railway Museum. Why not an aviation museum? Surely it cannot be left just to the MTR to remember Kai Tak Airport?