Last year I wrote at length about some of the less-talked-about traumas of flying, i.e. things probably worse than delayed or lost luggage. For instance, the sheer horror of what was formerly Hong Kong's Kai Tak International Airport, its runway built out on the water due to land shortage. Up until its closing in 2000, arriving 747s had to make a sharp right turn before hitting a delibately-checkerboarded mountainside, then drop like a dead weight onto a fastly approaching runway, while still turning and missing a ton of high rise buildings. Thanks to the glory of You Tube, and a recent personal hell flight from Texas, I decided to update that post and show this (660K mpeg) clip of what streetgoers got to witness in the heyday of Kai Tak. Several people have written to me since that old post and declared that they literally were eye level with people hanging laundry on their rooftops while making their hectic descent into that place.
Even more harrowing is the airport on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, where a thin strip of beachfront, open to sunbathers and swimmers, lies only yards from the touchdown point of major international flights. This montage (5.8M mpeg) chronicles a beach-eye view of assorted arrivals; stay with it, the planes get bigger and bigger, and at one point while a large Air France jet spools up for take-off, some spectators (clearly having enjoyed this before) are holding on to the blast fence while their bodies levitate horizontally. Who the hell needs Club Med for island entertainment?
Finally, Ken forwards this great link to a hilarious video of a civilian from the Atlanta Journal Constitution taking a joyride with a Blue Angels F-18 pilot. With camera focused on his position in the backseat, the dude acts all tough, until of course he gets blasted vertically to 7,000 feet in two seconds and rolled like a zeppoli through sugar at the San Genarro. There are a few individual videos, the best one is #2 where he keeps passing out and then waking up to say what a great time he's having. He finally asks about the barf bag in #4.
There are a bunch of cool St. Maarten & Kai Tak pictures at http://www.aviationpics.de/appr/app.htm
The chart for the approach to Kai Tak is also in the 'preview' section.
Posted by: jim | May 12, 2006 at 03:18 PM
The best song about harrowing airplane experiences has to be "Flaming Wreck" by The Pernice Brothers off of The World Won't End. A good soundtrack to this post
Posted by: youthelectronix | May 12, 2006 at 04:51 PM
I flew into Kai Tak a few times and it never got borint to say the least. Yes, the plane makes probaby a 60degree bank on landing and the wing tip is barely a hundred feet over the rooftops. Its a lot like landing a 747 on 42nd St while crusing down broadway at 250+ miles per hour. I also landed at the military airport at Hualien, Taiwan where the plane not only does a similar last minute turn, but the runway is a LOT shorter and and ends with ocean a few yards away, and just for good measure the entire airport is studded with anti aircraft guns and machine gun nests.
Posted by: Bobby Bunny | May 13, 2006 at 08:06 PM