Arriving at Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport on Saturday to fly to Beijing, I had to fight my way through crowds of local people with cameras, milling around the terminal building. Thousands more lined the perimeter fence and nearby rooftops, taking pictures of planes landing and taking off.
This weekend was their last chance to do so, as last night the airport closed for good after the 10.30 p.m. Cathay Pacific flight to London took off. In a military-style operation which has been two years in the planning, 1,000 vehicles, 70 barges, 30 aircraft and 40,000 people moved all the airport equipment overnight to a new $20 billion airport 30 km away in the New Territories, which goes into operation this morning.
What no one anticipated was the huge wave of nostalgia which has engulfed Hong Kong for the old airport, named after two long-forgotten property developers, Sir Kai Ho-kai and Mr Au Tack. Most people loved having the airport right in the middle of the city. From almost anywhere in Hong Kong one could at any moment of the day see the great jumbo jets glide into the heart of Hong Kong, disappearing behind high rise buildings to reappear on the stretch of reclaimed land in the harbour which contained its single runway.
They were testimony to Hong Kong's links with the rest of the world. Kai Tak was also the most thrilling, scary airport at which to arrive. Pilots flew in over Kowloon towards a hill on which was marked an orange and white chequer board. At this point they banked steeply and took their aircraft full of white-knuckled passengers low over tall buildings crowded together in which, at night, one could see residents eating stir fries or watching television.
So demanding was the flight path for pilots that the approach is programmed into flight simulators used to train air crews all over the world. Kai Tak dates back to 1936, when the first scheduled aircraft arrived - an Imperial Airways De Havilland 86 biplane, escorted by nine RAF planes from the carrier Hermes. It was the start of a regular service by Imperial Airways which boasted the following year that it could fly passengers to London for the Coronation in 10 days, stopping at Penang, Karachi, Bahrain, Alexandria, Brindisi and Marseille.
The runway then crossed a main road which was fitted with gates like a level crossing. Obviously, the grassy air strip was not capable of handling the big increase in air travel after the second World War. In the early 1950s, French engineers extended it 8,000 feet into the harbour, leveling a low range of hills to obtain the landfill.
Then, too, landing was a stomach-churning experience. The travel writer Jan Morris recalls (in Hong Kong, Epilogue to an Empire, published by Penguin) that "flying into it on a blustery day, even in the 1950s, seemed an all but suicidal exercise, the aircraft lowering itself crab-like, wobbly with gusts of cross winds, nervously racing its engines and feathering its propellers".
In the 1990s, as Hong Kong became a great international city, it became clear that as Kai Tak could not be enlarged it would have to be replaced. In was operating beyond capacity because of a night curfew and turning down 100 requests for slots every week. So, in one of the biggest earth movement projects in world history, two small islands and a headland were levelled at Chek Lap Kok beside Lantau island to create Hong Kong's new airport, four times bigger than the old.
Designed by the English architect Sir Norman Foster, it is undoubtedly an engineering marvel of light and space, but I felt when I went to see it last week as if I was entering a giant, soulless hangar in which people are reduced to insignificance. It reinforced my theory that airport designers should be required to use Reagan (formerly National) airport in Washington as their model.
There everything is on a human scale, unlike this glass-enclosed aeronautics palace with its vast marble floors and rows of fake palm trees. Despite the vastness of the building, Sir Norman has said that people will not get lost. "The fact is that in most passenger terminals you don't know where the hell you are," he told Hong Kong Magazine. "To know where to go [at Chek Lap Kok] you simply follow the roof. You follow the lines of the vaulted arch structure and although you are moving through a variety of spaces, you always know where you are."
The benefits are proudly listed by the airport authority - natural light, calm setting, 143 shops, Internet lounges, all kinds of restaurants and the biggest liquor and tobacco concession in the world (12 stores run by Air Rianta).
The drawbacks are that airport charges will go up by about 20 per cent compared to Kai Tak, at a time when Asian airlines are cutting back and laying off staff because of the economic crisis. Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd said its airport costs may increase by about 25 per cent, and air cargo handling fees are going up by 30 per cent.
The airport is connected to Hong Kong by an express railway, which provides a wonderful scenic ride into Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, though using it means hauling one's luggage out of a railway station in Hong Kong and taking a taxi to complete the journey. My own nostalgia for Kai Tak was heightened when I found that the taxi fare into town from the new airport is £30, more than twice that from Kai Tak. I may get to love Chek Lap Kok one day, but it's going to take time.