Kai Tak

Wysiwyg, are you making the subtle suggestion that we shouldn’t vote for our favorite aircraft on the basis that they look pretty?;)

I flew to Kai Tak once. Back in 1995, with BA on a 747. Landing was “a little” bumpy to say the least. I must say though Kai Tak is with out a doubt one of the best airports in the world I have passed through. Brought a tear to my eye to see it go.

Nice pictures. 🙂

There is lots of photos of the famous approach into Kai tak,this is one in the opposite direction
Cathay Pacific 777-367 B-HNH

i agree with what you say, and it often depends on how you’ve learnt and to what extent you fly.

Some people such as mysen are real sad buggers. I’ll pay £25 for an add-on a/c and scenery. These are a lot more realistic than the freeware you can download requiring FMS inputting and correct start-up procedures compared to the default stuff that 90% of simmers will use. Flying RW SIDs and STARs only work with enhanced payware scenery where you get to appreciate more, but as you say metrological conditiions are poor unless you purchase add-ons such as FS CLouds and FS Weather where localisation effects can be slightly enhances, but not to Microbustage proportions or being effected by shifting weather patterns in a local area.

The usual £50 scenereo as you say is used by the majority and is how most people start off, but for the real anoraks they can spend an absoloute fortune, having “almost” everything bar the movement of the a/c via 3 pc screens and a hellofa lot of RAM

FS is very good as a basic platform but is so limited in what it is able to model. For example, if Microsoft bought out a ‘place your head in the lions mouth’ simulator it would all look correct but somehow completely miss the actual point. This is the situation when you try to factor in specific local weather criteria to FS. FNC weather (like many other oddball microclimates) cannot be replicated in £50 PC simulators. Neither can the peripheral sensations required to register that pitting feeling in your stomach as you sense windshear taking effect.
FS allows many people to become very knowledgeable with respect to the button pushing side of commercial aviation with the downside in that it creates quite a few armchair experts! I’ll never forget a flightdeck visit when I was on the Saab 340. This guy came up front, it was his first ever flight in a real aeroplane and yet he spent the next five minutes he lectured me on how the Dash 8 was so much easier to land than the Saab 340 and had I tried using a delayed flare technique!!!

regards
wys

Originally posted by wysiwyg
Don’t forget that Flight Sim is just a very, very good game. I’m sorry if that disappoints some of the simmers round here but it’s plain fact. Approaching 05 at FNC on flight sim gives you next to no credible appreciation of what the place can really deliver.

hell yea, but you certainly get to appreciate difficulty levels in comparison. For example following Real World charts with a good scenery and model to get a realistic impression as possable is certainly a lot harder than using a defauly B734 for a straight in approach to rwy 27R at EGLL where you can fly a B734 in “just the odd 50knts” above touchdown speed straight in from 15 miles if you really wanted.

I used it purely for comparitive termonology

the airport at Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands is also one of the most diff. approaches i have ever seen.

From what I remember, half of Kai Tak is now a GO KART race track, no idea about the other half though.

Originally posted by EGNM
Funchal 05 i find is easier since the extension and the pillars into the sea now – remember the first time i tried on FS – flew alkl the way down and crashed 🙁 – that was about 98 i think

Don’t forget that Flight Sim is just a very, very good game. I’m sorry if that disappoints some of the simmers round here but it’s plain fact. Approaching 05 at FNC on flight sim gives you next to no credible appreciation of what the place can really deliver.

what are they doing with kai tak

Funchal 05 i find is easier since the extension and the pillars into the sea now – remember the first time i tried on FS – flew alkl the way down and crashed 🙁 – that was about 98 i think

It’s bizarre how Kai Tak gets the most referrences when it is nowhere near as demanding as 05 in FNC and not even as dramatic as a 13R Canarsie into JFK. I’ve been on the flightdeck many times into all three and would definitely rate Kai Tak as the more straightforward one of the three.

Hi all….

I am just new to this forum….

What a interesting forum of all the knowledge about airlines, airplane, and interesting stories around here.

Hong Kong is my home town, although I am now living in Toronto.

I don’t know about the pilots, it may be a big challenge for them, but as a passenger, I like it much more at Kai Tak then the new HKG. It was an experience that you can’t get it anywhere else in the world(may be just my personal experience, since myself had been to a lots of airport around the world)
And I flown through Kai Tak lots of time and still like it better than the new one but only will last in the memory.

Plus, to where I live in Hong Kong, I could watch which airline is approaching to Kai Tak. I remember back in those day, whenever my parent need to go to airport and pick my relatives, I would been watching every plane that flown by and when I saw either is United or Northwest, then I would tell my parent and then we head off to the airport because it only take 20 mins to airport from my house, which min the waiting time for us in the airport.

anyway, hi again.. and btw nice pictures…:D

Well when the engine is scrapping the runway it is

you are right…..and its a pretty steep turn. I remember that turn when we were about to land into Kai Tak on Ansett B743……amazing sight.

If i remember from flight sim you have to make a turn just before the final stages of landing

yes…landing from the bay side was virtualy impossible due to all the hills and mountains.

Kai Tak was surrounded by obsticles.

you had high terrain coming in from the sth, you had housing and buildings coming in from the north.

it was just a plane and simple nightmare, god help you if it was typhoon season! things got worse 10 fold.

Wel im sure stunts like those dont do any good to the a/c and reduce its life aswell the pilots probably get a bullocking from their boss!

What’s the score with tailwind landings/takeoffs ?

I watched a load of 737’s and similar sized planes take off into the wind at Prestwick one day and then two 747’s land with the wind behind them. One of the 747’s later took off in the same windless direction and once aloft did a complete U-turn to head off on it’s course INTO the wind ?

The 747’s were both freighters mind you, does this make for operational differences ?