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Music Videos
Title : FS 2004 Kai Tak airport's checkerboard approach
Author : Walt Fuller
Description : Flight Simulator 2004 video featuring an
instrumental audio clip I created using Jammer 5 music composition software.
I call the audio clip ("Dangerous Vacation").
I tried to incorporate a "feel of the Orient" to the music.
The aircraft featured is a freeware 747-400 available for
download at Surclaro.com
I custom built the cockpit for the 747. I have not yet made this cockpit available as an add-on for FS 2004.
I may do so in the future.
The checkerboard approach, as it is known, was one of the most dangerous and challenging approaches to be flown among the worlds airports. Very difficult in Flight Simulator as well!
Runway 13 approach
Prior to its 1998 closure, the landing approach using runway 13 at Kai Tak was spectacular and world-famous. To land on runway 13, an aircraft first took a descent heading northeast. The aircraft would pass over the crowded harbour, and then the very densely populated areas of Western Kowloon. This leg of the approach was guided by an IGS (Instrument Guidance System, a modified ILS) after 1974.
Upon reaching a small hill marked with a checkerboard in red and white, used as a visual reference point on the final approach (in addition to the middle marker on the Instrument Guidance System), the pilot needed to make a 47° visual right turn to line up with the runway and complete the final leg. The aircraft would be just two nautical miles (3.7 km) from touchdown, at a height of less than 1,000 feet (300 m) when the turn was made. Typically the plane would enter the final right turn at a height of about 650 feet (200 m) and exit it at a height of 140 feet (43 m) to line up with the runway. This maneuver has become widely known in the piloting community as the "Hong Kong Turn" or "Checkerboard Turn".
Landing the runway 13 approach was already difficult with normal crosswinds since even if the wind direction was constant, it was changing relative to the aeroplane during the 47° visual right turn. The landing would become even more challenging when crosswinds from the northeast were strong and gusty during typhoons. The mountain range northeast of the airport also makes wind vary greatly in both speed and direction. From a spectator's point of view, watching large Boeing 747s banking at low altitudes and taking big crab angles during their final approaches was quite thrilling. Despite the difficulty, the runway 13 approach was nonetheless used most of the time due to the prevailing wind direction in Hong Kong.
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Related video
Honduras Toncontin Int'l airport, opened Jan 5 1935. Has shortest int'l runway with large commercial jet traffic; has step down approach through terrain. Pilots use a series of land marks to navigate their way in. If they don't tough down between two marks about 400ft apart they go around.
The video does not show the 65 foot sheer cliff at the other end of the runway. Since this video the runway has been lengthened 900 feet by cutting down a hill to reduce the steep incline of approach.
Aircraft making the approach is an American Airlines Boeing 757.
