航空與機場：由啟德到赤鱲角

1. Before Kai Tak: a rejected plan, an airport all the same

In 1925 the Hong Kong Government proposed the Kai Tak Bund airport, but the British Committee of Imperial Defence rejected it on the ground that it breached the 1922 Washington Convention’s rule against new air force bases in East Asia. The rejection shows what an airport was at first: not a transport facility but a military one, permitted or refused according to international armaments arrangements rather than local need.

Four years later the main facilities of Kai Tak were completed and began operating for both military and civil purposes; in the same year the Harbour Office was appointed Director of Air Services. Between a rejected plan and a working airport lay a compromise: dual military and civil use.

The start of civil aviation can be dated to a day: on 24 March 1936 an Imperial Airways aircraft named Dorado flew from Penang to Hong Kong, the first civil airliner to land at Kai Tak and use its civil hangar. On 23 October the same year Pan American’s seaplane Philippine Clipper completed its first trans-Pacific flight and landed at Kai Tak. Scheduled services and long-haul routes were connected in that order.

2. Occupation and after: runway, tower and terminal

Under the Japanese occupation Kai Tak was planned as a regional hub. On 10 September 1942 the occupation government held a groundbreaking ceremony at Ngau Chi Wan for the airport’s expansion, aiming to make it a key civil and military aviation centre for East and Southeast Asia.

After the war civil aviation needed a dedicated department. In 1946 the Civil Aviation Department was formally established, taking over civil aviation matters at Kai Tak from the Harbour Office. Moving from an aviation sideline of the Harbour Office to an independent civil aviation authority made aviation a profession in its own right.

The hardware expanded step by step. On 12 September 1958 Runway 13/31 came into operation at a cost of $90 million; on the same day the airport was renamed Hong Kong International Airport. On 2 November 1962 the new passenger terminal was completed and opened, entering operation on the 12th of the same month. Runway and terminal together turned “able to land” into “able to handle many passengers at once”.

3. The jet age: a capacity ceiling

On 11 April 1970 a Pan American Boeing 747 flew from Tokyo to Kai Tak, the first visit to Hong Kong by what was then the world’s largest passenger aircraft; the next day it carried Hong Kong’s first batch of passengers via Japan to San Francisco. Larger aircraft raised demands on runway length, taxiways and terminal capacity at the same time.

Kai Tak’s limit was not its equipment but its position: the runway reached into Kowloon Bay with dense buildings all around, and aircraft descended low over the city. The spectacle became part of Hong Kong’s identity, but it also meant little room for noise relief, safety margins or expansion.

In 1978 the Hong Kong government decided to site the new airport at Chek Lap Kok. The decision did not start construction; it fixed the location first. Once the move was settled, all subsequent planning — flight paths, reclamation, road links — had to be rearranged around an airport that did not yet exist.

4. The Rose Garden: from decision to opening

On 12 October 1988 Governor David Wilson proposed in his policy address a new international airport at Chek Lap Kok to replace Kai Tak. In 1989 the Government announced a construction programme called the Rose Garden Project, officially the Hong Kong Airport Core Programme. The name matters: the airport was not a single works project but a group of core projects.

Institutions had to come first. In 1990 Hong Kong passed and implemented the Provisional Airport Authority Ordinance, with the Provisional Airport Authority responsible for planning, designing and building the new airport. A statutory body, then construction contracts, is the fixed order for large infrastructure.

Cargo needed its own arrangement. On 30 June 1995 the Chinese and British sides awarded the new airport’s air cargo franchise to two companies, Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited and Asia Airfreight Terminal Company Limited. Passenger business is counted in flights and cargo in terminals; handling the franchises separately shows that air freight is an industry of its own in Hong Kong.

On 6 July 1998 Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok came into service and Kai Tak ceased operation the same day. The move was completed within one day, with no overlap. That is precisely why any failure would be visible at once: on 21 July the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region set up a commission of inquiry into the new airport’s operation and the causes of its problems.

5. The third runway: from option to reclamation

Fourteen years after opening, the airport needed to expand again. On 20 March 2012 the Chief Executive in Council approved the Airport Authority’s proposal and adopted the three-runway option. Going from two runways to three is not simply adding a strip: it requires new reclamation, a new concourse and new flight paths.

On 1 August 2016 the Airport Authority began reclamation for the Three-Runway System. Reclamation drew the most attention because it alters the seabed and the water, making environmental assessment and ecological compensation central to approval. On 22 December 2016 the court refused the judicial review brought by two applicants against the third runway’s environmental impact assessment.

Read the three dates together and the standard procedure for major infrastructure appears: the Executive Council settles the option, works begin, and judicial review may still be decided after work has started. That order does not mean the dispute is resolved; it means the procedure has run.

6. What remains unfinished

This dossier adds no passenger, cargo or aircraft movement figures. The three are compiled on different definitions and publication cycles, and checking them would require year-by-year Airport Authority reports and official statistics that this site has not verified.

The cost, overruns and financing of the Airport Core Programme are also left blank: the Rose Garden involved many separate projects, each with its own contracts and settlements, and they cannot be combined into a single “airport cost”.

The completion date of the Three-Runway System does not appear in the chronicle. The record reaches the start of works and the judicial review ruling, but not the day the system fully opened, so this dossier says construction began and does not say it was completed.

Later uses of the Kai Tak site, including the cruise terminal and housing, belong to another thread involving urban planning and land development, and are not completed here.