Flying into Hong Kong on a simulator

To paraphrase Paul Kelly: Have you ever seen Kai Tak airport from a 737 at night? Brad Green, Brett Silvester and I did in the Flight Experience simulator at Brisbane Airport on 7th November 2021. The old Hong Kong airport was known as one of the trickiest in the world to fly into, especially from west to east, because of the “kink” you had to make to the right at somewhere between 1000ft and 500ft AGL to get onto short final. First though Brad did a circuit at Kingsford Smith Airport. Then it was my turn, taking off on RWY07 from the new Hong Kong Airport (Chek Lap Kok), climbing to 2000ft on a bright sunny day and heading slightly right. Suddenly it was night and we were in IMC, flying the ILS into RWY13, emerging from the clouds just in time to see the arc of flashing lights guiding us towards the threshold. Banking to the right we followed the lights, flying between the apartment blocks down to the threshold. It was, needless to say, quite a challenge. But with the assistance of Joe our instructor we landed safely and didn’t end up in the harbour. It was great to fly in a simulator the flight I’d done at least once before in real life when the old airport was still in use.

Leave a Reply