@jetsetmodels400: Landing on Kai Tak’s Runway 13 was one of the trickiest visual approaches in commercial aviation, mostly because of the terrain and how built-up Kowloon was. You’d fly the ILS localizer inbound, but there was no glideslope, just lateral guidance, so you had to work the descent yourself while aiming at a checkerboard painted on a hillside in Kowloon. Around 675 feet, you’d start the famous checkerboard turn: a hard right of about 47 degrees to line up with the runway, switching from instruments to flying it visually. After that you were skimming over apartment rooftops, usually fighting a crosswind off Victoria Harbour, and you couldn’t let the energy or the airplane get away from you. There was no room to salvage a bad approach. If you turned late, got unstable, or caught a gust, you went around. It wasn’t really a landing in the normal sense. It was a maneuver, and it sorted out the pilots who were paying attention from the ones who weren’t.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ #avgeek #747 #kaitakairport Visit Brian Keene at - AvPro Designs

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Sunday 26 April 2026 22:14:21 GMT