AIRPORT OF THE NINE DRAGONS
AIRPORT OF THE NINE DRAGONS
by Captain Chic Eather
Kai Tak Airport, forerunner of the great airport of Hong Kong, also known as the Airport of the Nine Dragons, in 1946 showed the ravages of the War Years with a terminal which was just a tent city, where Customs and Immigration worked on duck boards that blithely floated in every downpour.
First Officer Chic Eather's Dakota, half of the then fleet of the fledgling Cathay Pacific Airways, touched down on the macadam surface of Runway 31 in December 1946. The Captain had skipped the Dakota just above an angry China Sea heading for a sliver of light - the quarter-mile-wide Lei Yue Mun Pass. Safely through the Pass they entered an unidentifiable vacuum, which the Captain said in a hopeful voice was the Harbour!
Chic thought that was a pointless remark for the cloud seemed to have no ceiling with the torrential rain cutting the visibility to just the wipers. A slight bump heralded the landing - he still hadn't seen anything!
As the ground engineer chocked the wheels the rain eased, exposing the surrounding terrain. Rugged hills encircled the Airport, losing their peaks in the angry overcast. Here was a workplace to tax the strongest nerves.
Chic Eather is an established author. His best seller was "Syd's Pirates", which Boeing 747 Captain Martin Willing rated as "mandatory reading for anyone with even the slightest interest in the foundation of Cathay Pacific".
The aviation history of the Hong Kong Colony is a romatic story of growth with the Airport of the Nine Dragons as the focus of communication and transport. A pilot who spent nearly 30 years and 25,000 hours of jousting with the elements, the treacherous approaches and the politics of the era, Chic Father is well qualified to relate the aviation history of Hong Kong, and his avid interest in the Colony's origins and its future makes for compulsive reading.
Lester Padman - Boolarong Press Consultant.
First Officer Chic Eather's Dakota, half of the then fleet of the fledgling Cathay Pacific Airways, touched down on the macadam surface of Runway 31 in December 1946. The Captain had skipped the Dakota just above an angry China Sea heading for a sliver of light - the quarter-mile-wide Lei Yue Mun Pass. Safely through the Pass they entered an unidentifiable vacuum, which the Captain said in a hopeful voice was the Harbour!
Chic thought that was a pointless remark for the cloud seemed to have no ceiling with the torrential rain cutting the visibility to just the wipers. A slight bump heralded the landing - he still hadn't seen anything!
As the ground engineer chocked the wheels the rain eased, exposing the surrounding terrain. Rugged hills encircled the Airport, losing their peaks in the angry overcast. Here was a workplace to tax the strongest nerves.
Chic Eather is an established author. His best seller was "Syd's Pirates", which Boeing 747 Captain Martin Willing rated as "mandatory reading for anyone with even the slightest interest in the foundation of Cathay Pacific".
The aviation history of the Hong Kong Colony is a romatic story of growth with the Airport of the Nine Dragons as the focus of communication and transport. A pilot who spent nearly 30 years and 25,000 hours of jousting with the elements, the treacherous approaches and the politics of the era, Chic Father is well qualified to relate the aviation history of Hong Kong, and his avid interest in the Colony's origins and its future makes for compulsive reading.
Lester Padman - Boolarong Press Consultant.
Copies of this book may be available over the internet.
