Your Textbook Kai-Tak Approach (not)
Kai-Taking yourself....I found This Video on my travels on the Net yesterday and went "WTF!". So I got our resident fly-boy Rob "Brainless" Byrnes to give us a run-down on what's happening in it. Take the stick, Rob -
"Pilots will be talking about the dreaded RWY13 approach into Kai Tak, Hong Kong's old international airport, for all eternity.
Normally commercial aircraft are lined up and on glideslope 5 to 10nm from the target runway. Typically the runway is fully sighted at approx 3nm and a constant heading and powered approach is flown to touchdown.
Kai Tak was very different.
Due to land constraints and the unique geography of Hong Kong the airport wasn't in the ideal location. In order to land at Kai Tak's RWY13 the approach was actually flown at approx 89 degrees. The lucky pilot then had to make a turn to the runway heading of 136 degrees. This at less than 2nm to the threshold at approx 1000ft - a big turn at a low altitude, especially if you are in a 747. On a clear day passengers could actually see TV's in the Kowloon apartment blocks that the aircraft flies between on finals.
The video has a caption that states something like "This is a pretty normal landing for Kai Tak". Pigs arse! This dopey Korean Air Freighter jockey has committed one of the cardinal sins of a landing pilot - he has overshot the runway centerline and is no longer lined up correctly. Remember that hard low turn to 136 degrees? He was too late and ended up oriented to land on the airports apron area.
Take a close look at the rudder and spoilers on the wing tops. Captain Korea has put in some MASSIVE control inputs to get back on track. Multiple cockpit alarms for bank angle exceedance, glideslope minimums and terrain warnings would be making conversation impossible. The First Officer's seat would be covered in faecal matter! And I suspect the left outboard engine is going to need a thorough inspection.
To see how it should be done check out an in-cockpit video of the approach Here, man
Also, to help visualize the approach here is a Jeppeson STAR plate. 
Jeppeson Airplane
Captain Korea is pretty much over the N’s of Main Apron."
Romeo Oscar Bravo Byrnes
More Here at Wikipedia
....And this is a great blog about Learning to Fly
Malcolm Lambe
Kai-Tak checkerboardSomething Brainless Byrnes didn't tell us here although he mentioned it in an email to me - from this interesting column at usa today by a lady pilot.
"The checkerboard was a painted reference on the side of a hill near the old Hong Kong airport, Kai Tak International, used as a visual reference for pilots to help guide them toward that airport's notoriously challenging landing. An instrument approach normally brings you down so when you "break out" into visual conditions you're lined up with the runway. At the old Hong Kong Airport the approach would bring us in so that when we broke out, instead of looking at the runway we would be looking at the checkerboard. A sharp right turn was required to turn onto final.
The new Hong Kong airport is much more straightforward and, although a beautiful and spacious facility, ordinary by comparison. I used to fly into the old Hong Kong airport in the late eighties and although it was a challenge, I found it exotic and exciting to fly that approach. Here's a picture of the checkerboard, courtesy of airliners.net, a wonderful resource for aviation information and photos.
When the old Hong Kong airport was in use, it utilized a "lead-in lighting system" which was a curved set of strobes for additional guidance to the pilots as they flew toward the runway. To the best of my knowledge, only one other airport in the world utilizes this type of curved lighting system, and that's New York's JFK airport. With the old Hong Kong airport closed, JFK is the only airport left which uses this unique lighting system to guide pilots visually in a curved path toward the runway. On occasion, as I've flown up the east coast of the United States, I've pointed this lighting system out to my passengers, as it's easily seen from the air when in use."
Also, you'll notice on the Jeppeson Plate this annotation - "Under no circumstances should pilots allow their aircraft to land short of Rwy 13 threshold which is displaced at 1790' (546m)" and "Possible turbulence on approach to Rwy 13 and in Lei Yue Mun Gap area" - in other words "Fasten your seatbelt, put your head between your knees and pray".
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Reader Comments (17)
How hard can it be to steer one of these mothers ??
Pilots give me the shits...
Which isn't much...
May I suggest you start with your head. not a limb per se however in your case.....
Lead Lights would be the equivalent of the ILS or IGS.