Originally Posted by
UAL Traveler
A while back I got a part of the story on the incident pictured in the above link from my friends at Boeing.
Before I go further, I'll point out the good news: the Air China flight from CKS had nearly 400 souls on board... they all survived because, in part, the ground speed was very low at incursion, and Kowloon Bay (near Hung Hom) is clearly very shallow. From the airport authority's operational standpoint, the bad news was that Kowloon Bay is very shallow!
The 747 sat right off the departure end of the runway, with the tail of the 747 sticking up high enough to prevent safe operations at Kai Tak. Given that the aircraft was rather quickly judged to be a writeoff, the decision was made to hastily remove the tail with whatever means available. Easier said than done. Portable power tools (I was told chainsaws were included in the mix) were first used in an abortive attempt to remove the obstruction. Boeing was ironically quite proud that to get the job done, ultimately HE had to be used to blast the tail off the fuselage!
There was a level 8 typhoon happening at the time of this incident. JW Marriott assured us (me traveling with wife AND mother) to proceed to the airport, that things were running normally (despite the letters that were slipped under the door, advising us to keep the curtians closed and stay away from the windows). The airport had the classic "card flip" boards, and we knew we had another night in HK when the cards all flipped at the same time to delayed. Rushed to the nearest phone (downstairs) in time to see the news media flowing in...and passengers wrapped in blankets walking in from the tarmac. Many had walked on the wing of the plane, and on to the jetty. No doubt these were lucky folks. Not so the thousands that were stranded in the airport, and slept on the floor using cardboard as a mattress, and newspaper as a blanket. We lucked out with the last room at the Kowloon Hyatt courtesey of a friend.