Word: cheks
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...warm and humid June day a few weeks before Hong Kong's old Kai Tak Airport closed in 1998. I'd filed a feature for a British newspaper about the spanking new airport at Chek Lap Kok and had an afternoon free. Normally I would have gone shopping for presents, but was spared that dreadful ordeal as I'd heard about a crazed band of plane spotters who gathered at Kai Tak to watch the planes land...
...With Kai Tak gone, many Hong Kong residents are understandably proud of its replacement, Chek Lap Kok (its drab proper name is the Hong Kong International Airport). It is undoubtedly a well-designed, efficient, world-class facility. Inside it is everything Kai Tak wasn't?spacious, airy and, with an inventive use of natural light, a little too bright for some when the morning sun catches those check-in desks. But it's also like so many international airports nowadays: somewhat soulless and homogenized. You could be in Schipol or Singapore. One reason Kai Tak is still held in such...
...busy airport right in the middle of town and loved by all," says Armstrong. "Chek Lap Kok is like any other airport?straight in approach, and boring. It simply doesn't generate the same fun, excitement or mystery that the old airport did. Long live...
...Chek Lap Kok is] too far away and is just a standard international airport," says Nevin Lim, a freelance tour guide in Hong Kong who gave up his hobby of plane spotting when Kai Tak closed. "It takes the fun out of flying. Kai Tak was so exciting because the planes flew so close to the city. There was always a possibility that there might be a problem of some sort. Of course, no one wanted anything to go wrong, but it was this element of danger that made Kai Tak so exhilarating...
...daunting challenge. Faced with a dramatic decline in reservations, airlines such as Cathay Pacific?which last week asked 14,000 of its employees to take four weeks of special leave starting in June?have been forced to slash their schedules by almost 50%. Passenger flow at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport?formerly heralded as Asia's busiest travel hub?is down 80% since the SARS outbreak, from 100,000 to 20,000 per day. Seats on remaining flights are plentiful, but the SARS epidemic makes mundane trips so irritating that even hardened road warriors are staying home...