CheckerBoard, Kowloon Tong

This entry is about a small piece of Hong Kong that used to play an integral part in the day to day goings on in the territory. Used to in that since 6th July 1998 it has become redundant. Even so, its fading glory can still be seen on a small hillock inside Kowloon Tsai Park in Kowloon Tong. I’m talking about the red and white checkerboard that acted as a visual reference to incoming pilots.

The theory goes something like this (apologies – I know nothing about flying planes, so this is strictly a layman’s understanding – feel free to add technical corrections in the comments): the final approach to Kai Tak airport was notoriously tricky, and often described as the most difficult in the world because of the proximity of the Kowloon mountains and the inability to execute a nice straight approach (apparently these are desirable if you fly a plane ).

The checkerboard was a visual indicator for pilots to pull a 47 ° right bank which would theoretically line them up with the approach to the runway. Very exciting if you were a passenger and no doubt the pilots must have got quite a buzz from the awkward (read: potentially hazardous) approach.

So, you can see that the innocuous pattern that can still (just about) be seen on the side of the hill (strictly speaking I believe it is actually part of Lok Fu Park, but Kowloon Tsai Park gives you a better view of the board itself) played a vital part in the lives of everyone who has entered the territory by plane. You could also say that it played a vital part in the daily lives of those who lived under the flight path too, because it wouldn’t have taken much to wipe out several thousand people with a small miscalculation.

As time wears inevitably on, I suspect the significance of this little board will gradually diminish. The old airport has long gone even though the land remains undeveloped (don’t even get me started on this one) and previously restrictive building height limits have been lifted – paving the way for a flourish of high-rises occupying the airspace once taken up by low-flying aircraft.

For those lucky enough to have experienced the excitement of landing at Kai Tak, then I suspect the board will live on as a happy piece of nostalgia, but it’s already beginning to look a bit neglected – the intervening decade has seen the red squares fading to a light pink and the white ones just looking generally shabby. It’s a great shame because I believe it should be up there alongside the Star Ferry and Queens Pier as a piece of the “collective memory”. Well worth preserving in-situ as a subtle reminder of times gone by.

You can actually walk to the top of the small hill that holds the board, there is a road that runs up the back. Apparently, it was  quite a spectacular vantage point when the airport was still in operation – in fact, if you see a picture of the underside of a plane in the midst of a right hand turn, chances are it was taken from this vantage point.