Rich Ahrens wrote:
Dante wrote:
That is not a crosswind landing.
Near the beginning of the video there is a windsock in the frame.
I agree now that the crosswind component does not
seem that high. (Speaking as someone who last was a pilot
in the 70s!) I have seen that video before and I had believed
that the trouble was caused by a crosswing landing,

It is or was the normal approach for Kai
Tak.
Well hardly!

I can't remember if it was buildings in the way or what precipitated
the requirement but it certainly had nothing to do with wind.

I was a passenger into there twice. I can't recall the second one
but I do recall that on the first one (747) I was looking out of the
right hand window onto a skyscraper's balcony at a woman
hanging out her washing. She was very close. (A few hundred feet?)
The aircraft was banked quite steeply to the right at this time.

On the left there was a mountain. A big mountain.

I had a look for a while from the ground and the airliners
were just leveling the wings as they crossed the fence.
The fence was not far from the threshold. Just a couple of
seconds.

There was a big visual target (really, a big red and
white billboard) on the mountain and I
guess that the drill was to aim for it until a mark
or line was crossed and then to turn right at some rate
and hopefully come out (most of the time) pointing the
right way, This video shows that it did not always
come out exactly right.

Maybe you can have a look using Google Earth?

My CFI's first real landing of a 747 (as opposed to sim work) was at Kai
Tak as a Northwest first officer. Heck of a way to break in.

That wasn't him/her in the video? g