Restored to full operations in 1947, Kai Tak handled the strangest one-way traffic boom in its history. In one month of 1949, 41,000 passengers were flown in from China to escape the advancing Communist armies. Mainland service ended a year later, and traffic declined to one-third of its former volume. The field itself, penned in by rocky peaks, had reached the limits of its development, and the largest four-engined ships were rapidly outgrowing it. For jets, it would be a cow pasture at the bottom of a canyon.
The Department of Civil Aviation, after concluding that nothing further could be done to expand the existing field, began casting around for alternate sites. Fourteen of them, including Stonecutters Island and Stanley Bay, were ruled out for excessive cost, inaccessibility, or risky topography before the experts decided to put the airport right next to the old one, on a strip of land that didn’t then exist.
The government put up the money and the job of building a promontory 7,800 feet long and 800 feet wide that would point directly into Kowloon Bay began in 1956. A few hills would have to be knocked down to clear the approaches, but disposal of the dirt would be simple, since 20 million cubic yards of fill were needed to build the promontory. The new airport runway was to have a length of 8,350 feet, extending the full length of the reclaimed strip and well beyond its landward end.
Three thousand laborers, most of them hauling dirt by hand, worked nearly three years to lay down the man-made peninsula. Although it was near the old airport, it overcame the earlier field’s approach limitations by being pointed straight at the 1,500-foot-wide harbor entrance of Lei Yue Mun, and at the opposite end, having the Kowloon hills truncated to permit another clear shot at the runway, depending on which direction best fitted weather conditions.
The new runway went into use in 1958, with the completion of the terminal coming several years later. Temporary terminal buildings bulged with incoming tourists, but they were moved through these buildings fairly well. Most colony residents are hardly aware of the arrival and departure of the huge jets, though they shake the earth with their thunder as they pass over Kowloon. Kai Tak has become a full 24-hour airport. Its 200-foot-wide runway is stressed to take a maximum plane weight of 400,000 pounds, well above the limit of the heaviest airliners. From the air it looks like a super-highway lost at sea.
North from Victoria Peak. The colony government and main business section are chiefly based on Hong Kong Island, foreground. Kowloon Peninsula and the long runway of Kai Tak Airport lie at top center. The New Territories start with the mountains in the background, extend north to the Red China border. Hong Kong is one of the busiest seaports in the world.
Hong Kong in a hurry. Queens Road Central, in the colony’s commercial center, swarms with pedestrians in a typical noon-hour rush.
