I've been a part of two airport moves (sort of, flew out of old AUS, into old HKG, month later, flew out of new HKG and into new AUS back in '98). My question is, how does the actual move work on the transition night? Do all arrivals after a certain time just land at the new airport or do all flights still arrive at the old airport and at the end of the operating day (1:30am or so), the planes are flown over to the new airport? Are there any ceremonial flights, like a flight carrying pax from the old to the new? I'm assuming the airlines/airports would be double staffed for some period of time, one to prep the new airport, one to wind down the old?

Essentially you've described how it works. The Wikipedia article for Kai Tak has a pretty good timeline summary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Tak_Airport

In 2004 I flew out of the old CAN and back into the new CAN 7 days later. What a world of difference.

Last year I took part in the festivities of PFN (Panama City-Bay County International Airport) closing and the new ECP (Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport) opening on May 23, 2010. This also marked the end of Delta-dominance on this market with Southwest commencing services from day 1 of the new airport.

On May 22, as part of the open house/ribbon cutting of the new airport and terminal a Southwest 737 landed with employees on board and if I remember correctly a second one landed later in the afternoon. Neither were scheduled flights and were filled exclusively with WN employees - thats how they got aircraft to ECP to handle the first flight of the day on the next day, May 23, the first day of scheduled operations (of which I was on that ECP-MCO flight, and for which WN did nothing special). Since WN wasn't already at the new airport all of their equipment was already staged there in advance.

Delta on the other hand ran a reduced schedule on May 22 into PFN. Essentially to eliminate any evening and later arrivals such that no aircraft would remain overnight at the old facility or need to make a jump to the new across the bay. This also means the first day of operations at ECP were a reduced schedule as they lacked three aircraft for the two early morning ATL flights and the one to MEM. As for all of the Delta ground equipment, I'm guessing they moved a good portion of the ground equipment after the last flight left PFN and before the first arrived into ECP.

I remember episodes of "MegaBuilder" or "Frontier of Contribution" dealing with the planning, building (including all new infrastructure) and the Relocation of HKG from Kowloon Bay to Lantau Island back around 2004/5 and has seen it re-runned since on Discovery channel.
Maybe there are clips of it floating around the internet.

There is an episode of "Extreme Engineering" from 2003 that covers the new airport build and subsequent move. It is available on Nextflix instant (collection 1, Episode 3).

Thanks that would probably be the one. The year, channel and content was something that I normally entertain myself with.