The old Kai Tak International Airport

The night scene of Hong Kong is breath-taking, especially if you were flying in from the old Kai Tak international airport (1924-1998), it is like vertical columns of diamonds piling onto one another.

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Talking about the old Kai Tak airport, the landing approach using runway 13 at Kai Tak was spectacular and world-famous. If you typed in "Difficult and Dangerous Airport Approaches" on your search engine, you are bound to find "Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport" mentioned all over the place, (click here to see a sample of such results).
We have a pilot friend whom have flown into Kai Tak before, he said they specifically taught you how to land in Kai Tak in pilot training school, it was considered one of the ten most difficult airports to land in the world.
To land on runway 13, an aircraft first took a descent heading northeast. The aircraft would pass over the crowded harbour, and then the very densely populated areas on Western Kowloon.
This leg of the approach was guided by an IGS (Instrument Guidance System, a modified ILS) after 1974. Upon reaching a small hill marked with a checkerboa rd in red and white, the pilot needed to make a 47° visual right turn to line up with the runway and complete the final leg.

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The aircraft would be just two nautical miles from touchdown, at a height of less than 1000 ft when the turn was made. Landing the 13 approach would become even more challenging when crosswinds from the northeast were strong and gusty during typhoons.

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From a spectator's point of view, watching fully-loaded Boeing 747's banking at low altitudes and taking big crab angles during their final approcahes was quite the thrill. Depite the difficulty, it was nonetheless used most of the time due to the prevailing wind direction in Hong Kong.
Despite its challenging approach and mountainous geographical surroundings, there were relatively few accidents at Kai Tak, only 8 accidents in its 74 years of operating history, and only one of those was fatal, other were either caused by human error or were weather related.
Our pilot friend said there were so few accidents provided the difficulty of the landing, because any pilot who had to land in Kai Tak would be trained specifically to do so. In fact, he said, "I often would have headaches after I landed in Kai Tak."
I have personally flown in and out of Kai Tak many times, I have witnessed Japanese and American tourists screaming on the plane upon landing, thinking we were going to crash, and when the tires of the plane touched the runway, you'll hear huge roars of joy and lots of hand-clapping. Those were quite amusing to see.
Information source: click here