"Pilots of even the largest jumbo jets had to make a tight turn at low altitude just seconds before touching down. Here, a Korean Airlines 747 makes what, believe it or not, is a typical approach into this airport." http://airvids.blogspot.com/

Woah.

wow

holy crap

http://www.airliners.net/articles/read.main?id=57

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

When the plane goes sideways 4 seconds before touchdown, my knuckles get very white. You can see why they built the new airport.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

also, that link no work for me, deathcow.

link works here (still)... its about landing at that airport

good write up about this I found here

http://www.welcometowallyworld.com/front-page/2006/4/4/your-textbook-kai-tak-approach-not.html

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

uh-oh - this is what happens when James stays up too late, he reverts to Dagobah English

really hard to do iam sure

Agree about the great write-up at wallyworld:

http://www.welcometowallyworld.com/front-page/2006/4/4/your-textbook-kai-tak-approach-not.html

Son is a pilot, will cack himself over this one! (So did I!)

That write up makes me happy I never had the pleasure(?) to fly into Kai Tak.

http://www.welcometowallyworld.com/front-page/2006/4/4/your-textbook-kai-tak-approach-not.html

I would like to say that wally world added advertisements to that thread after I linked it. Which is pretty lame, although i guess one does what they have to. Also the last two comments are highly suspicious in that they are both from people with only 1 vote and 1 comment. Each for this thread. They both relink to the thread i posted. They both use a link with a different format, which came from the front page, as opposed to inside the thread. I can't prove anything though, all of the IP's are different.

At any rate I suppose we will have to get used to this sort of opportunism, and its nice that the community can drive links places. However, its not so nice when its just self promotion and lacks any meaningful contribution.

"Lacks any meaningful contribution"? We've talked about your vid on our site. We've had a pilot comment. We've pointed people to your site. I didn't ask these dopes to put another link in. It's embarassing to me. So take them down. Mal at Welcome to Wallyworld. Tagged under "YouTube" at Technorati. Could've added "Videosift" but after this I wonder.

I didn't mean to insult you. We have had a fair amount of opportunism going on at the site. People promoting their own videos, linking their websites etc.. etc.. Clearly i thought your write up was excellent and full of meaningfull content or i would not have linked it. It just seemed odd that 2 users would sign up to vote for just this post, and comment on just this post, and include in each comment a link to your site.

If I am wrong I offer you my heart felt apology, and ask you to understand that we have been forced to stay vigiliant on things like this because of an incredibly small percentage of users who have abused our system.

That said I wanted to leave the links up because I have no real evidence of wrong doing, and I do like the write up. The tarmac map in particular is sweet.

I just posted an Update on the" Checkerboard Approach" to Kai-Tak - it was one of only two airports in the world to have this lead-in system. Now that's what you call flying!

Gday James
This is a great video, thanks for posting it.
I have long been fascinated with the Kai Tak approach, used to make it a routine flight playing MS Flight Sim. Sadly by the time I got my real wings the airport was all but closed. Got to fly in as pax a couple of times which was awesome and also one jump seat ride which was... well...

One other airport that has a reputation almost as bad as Kai Tak is Wellington International in New Zealand. Pilots call it "The Boot" as it is always trying to kick you in the arse. 99.9% of the time windy as all hell, a pure crosswind with a lot of shear as a bonus is the norm. Due to Wellington's geography the runway could not be built oriented to the prevailing winds.
The runway is short, you stuff it up one way you hit a mountain, mess it the other way you're in the water. You can bet on low cloud guaranteeing an ILS approach.
Very nasty airport.
As an interesting aside to the "The Boot", a 747 once had to land there in an emergency. To get thing back out once it was repaired the interior had to be completely gutted, minimum fuel was uploaded and the aircraft pushed right back to end of the runway. Thus at seriously minimum weight and with maximum takeoff distance available(TODA),the aircraft made a successful takeoff and flew to Auckland, (I think) where it was internally stuck back together .
It is also worth considering a Pan Am, American Airlines and Qantas requirement in 1976 was for a smaller capacity, higher performance 747, so was born the 747SP. Qantas wanted one so they could get pax capacity into Wellington!!!

187 people have come through Wallyworld via Digg to see this.

*promote

Re-promoting this video to the front page as a VideoSift Classic. Originally published on Friday 31st March 2006 (promotion called by gold star member HistNerd)

Thanks for the promote histnerd...and I never saw the controversy. Somebody ought to let me know when I should be rubbernecking.

this is a horrible landing that should have been aborted long beforehand. the Kai Tak approach was definately unique but it was far from typical to land a 747 on one wheel as haphazardly as this. looks good though, upvote.

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