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Flying into Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong

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5 years ago

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Hong Kong was a business centre and a popular intermediate port of call for all western countries for more than 800 years. Ships were anchored there before they ventured up the Pearl River to Canton (now Guangzhou) to conduct their business in commodities such as in tea, porcelain and silk. In return for these Chinese products, the British, to maintain the credit balance, introduced opium, grown in India, and sold it to China. Eventually, when China wanted to prohibit the importation and sale of opium, the British declared war. In 1842, after the end of the so-called first Opium war, China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain. This was followed after the second Opium War ended. Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the now expanded Kowloon Peninsular and New Territories for a period of 99 years, commencing in 1898.

In 1925, the authorities acquired a strip of flat land for use as a flying club on a property near the Victoria Harbour, which was being reclaimed and developed by a Dr Ho Kai and Mr Au Tak. The airfield was also used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and then in 1936, the first Imperial Airways aircraft, to land there, was a DH 86A Express (4-engine, biplane) with Cargo and just one passenger. 

During the Japanese occupation in WW 2, the original runway was extended using prisoners of war labour. Cathay Pacific Airways was founded after the war in 1946 with a solitary war surplus DC-3 named ‘Betsy’ with the initial intention of importing wool from Australia. Meanwhile, the population in Hong Kong was growing with refugees fleeing Communist China. To house them all many highrise buildings were constructed. As labour was cheap, luxury and electronic goods began to be also manufactured in abundance in Hong Kong. In 1958, the short runway, at what was now called the Kai Tak aerodrome, was extended to 8,000 ft. and then later extended to accommodate the wide body, big jets, such as the Boeing 747, Douglas DC10 and Lockheed L1011 Tri Stars.

The problem with Kai Tak was that the landing approach to one end of its runway was over the Hong Kong harbour, between high ground in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, involving a low turn at 550 feet at 2.2 miles. Even for veteran pilots it was exciting, especially in bad weather with high wind and low visibility, to which Hong Kong is often subjected to. Eventually, it became the busiest single-runway, cargo airport in the world, working to its full capacity.

 From the early eighties, Air Lanka, too, had regular flights from Bangkok, Thailand to Hong Kong. During those days someone had built a cement factory in Hong Kong harbour and that used to spew out smoke. As a result, even on days with good weather the visibility was bad. On the hillside of a park called Lok Fu, at the end of the approach of the Instrument Guidance System (IGS), there was a ‘Checker board’ and pilots were expected to fly visually towards it.

Additionally, they had flashing lead in-lights also known as ‘rabbit lights’, mounted in the sea, directing the aircraft on a curved approach path to the landing threshold. Safeguards had to be in place such as two different electrical sources on alternative lights to prevent total failure. Closer to the touch down end, lights with limited beam width (to ensure accurate flying) were mounted on building roof tops as the final approach was low over these buildings. By law, no other flashing lights were allowed in the area. Not even for advertising thereby minimising the chances of pilots making mistakes. The lights were ‘on’ 24/7. There were two settings. High intensity during bad weather and day time and low intensity during night time.

I started flying into Kai Tak as a First Officer in the early eighties in the old Boeing 707 aircraft, which needed a lot of muscle to manually fly that critical approach to the runway, known as ‘Runway 13’. Then we graduated to the Lockheed Tri Stars, which made matters easier with a bigger flight deck with larger windows improving visibility on the final approach descending low level turn in excess of 40 degrees.

Finally, Air Lanka invested in ‘fly by wire’ Airbus A340 aircraft, which needed no muscle at all but the excitement was still the same which necessitated each flight crew member to adjourn to the toilet before the top of descent for a ‘nervous pee’. This happened every time all the time!  One day, soon after Air Lanka acquired the A340, I was required to operate an evening flight to Kai Tak. Due to the A340’s design, our crew had reduced to two (Captain and First Officer) in the flight deck from the previous three (Captain, First Officer and Second Officer/Flight Engineer). It was mainly to reduce the fixed costs of crew salaries. The S/O or F/E had a vital role to play besides operating the panel. He was an extra pair of eyes, when things got busy, vital actions wouldn’t be missed and mistakes not made.

After take-off from Bangkok we were told that a Director of Air Lanka and his wife were on board our flight. This officer and gentleman had a reputation of being a strict disciplinarian, a proud product of the Royal Air Force (RAF) College Cranwell, a former Royal Ceylon Air Force (RCyAF) Officer, and a Flight Instructor of some of my own Flight instructors in the SLAF. Having left the RCyAF, he had flown with the RAF. After retirement from the RAF he joined one of the many civil flying schools at Ratmalana as Chief Flight Instructor.

According to some of his students, although he was a very competent Flight Instructor, he ran a ‘tight ship’ and had a ‘short fuse’. Some students shivered in their boots. A definite ‘no-no’ in modern times. Being a close friend and neighbour of the then ‘Royal Family’ at Horagolla, he was later appointed a Director at Airport and Aviation Ltd Sri Lanka (AASL) and subsequently a Director at Air Lanka. The feedback I received by my own SLAF instructors and relatively junior Air Lanka First Officers who were trained by him, was that he didn’t shake hands and that his social behaviour was highly unpredictable. I had never met him but his reputation went ahead of him. It was an understatement to say that I was a bit apprehensive. I had heard that a few months before, when he was a Director at AASL he had chided one of his ex-colleagues for inviting his (the Director’s) wife to sit in the flight deck for the landing!

Anyway, courtesy demanded that at some point during the flight between Bangkok and Hong Kong, I had to make myself known as the Captain of the flight. What better time than the top of descent into Hong Kong when I would be going to the cabin to fulfil my ‘physiological’ need. After exchanging pleasantries, (I didn’t shake hands though) I invited him to sit in for the approach and landing which was always thrilling. He mentioned that he had flown into Hong Kong before in Bristol Britannia and Vickers VC 10 aircraft and requested that I permit his wife to do so. I was totally taken by surprise, but able to hide my reactions and agreed without hesitation.

The flight was uneventful until the latter part of the descent where we were informed by Hong Kong Control that the expected IGS for Runway 13 was unserviceable and instead they offered us an older, non-precision approach known as a ‘Visual Step Down’. Although neither my First Officer nor I had done such an approach before, we were carrying the necessary maps and charts that would allow us to safely carry out such an exercise. The French, UTA Douglas DC 8 pilots with whom Air Ceylon pilots flew used to say, “If you could read and understand English, then you can fly anywhere”. We could do the same (read and understand). The only problem was that the right turn to the final approach, after Stone Cutters Island, was almost 100 degrees in comparison to the regular IGS Approach which was only 47 degrees to the right. Both turns need to be done manually keeping the runway in sight.

The change of approach also meant a delay to all inbound traffic as adequate traffic separation had to be maintained. Now dusk turned to night. At last we were cleared for our self-briefed approach. Just as we got to the minimum descent altitude (it was a ‘gin’ clear night), we looked out and could see nothing familiar. Upendra, my First Officer, suggested dutifully that we should go-around. Then, it struck me that if I go slightly left I may catch a glimpse of the lead-in lights, which were flashing 24/7 in the harbour. Sure enough the lights were still on. I announced “Lead-in lights in sight” and continued with a sense of relief.

The approach speed of the ‘fly by wire’ A340 aircraft can be ‘selected’ by the pilot or ‘managed’ by the autopilot. On ‘selected’ mode the autopilot maintains any speed selected by the pilot in an airspeed window. On the other hand, the ‘managed speed’ automatically maintains an appropriate speed, depending on the flap setting. For that to happen we had to ‘activate the approach’ programmed through the Flight Management System (FMS) computers beforehand. I kept the autopilot on so that both pilots could search for visual cues to establish where we were. What the autopilot was doing was reflected exactly in our flight instruments. So, the plan was to take the autopilot off and continue to fly manually after visually establishing our position. The standard phraseology was “Autopilot off, speed managed”.

This time when the speed was managed it went up to 250 knots and the engines spooled up! We had forgotten to ‘activate our approach’ in the rush when our workload increased. If a third crew member had been there he would have probably reminded us to programme our FMS Computers well ahead of commencing the approach. Since it was too late to turn our heads in to programme them, I then did the next best thing possible and called for “selected speed and 140 knots” (our target approach speed), which was selected by First Officer Upendra and we proceeded to land. That saved the day and engine power returned to normal, ending up in a good approach and landing in the night. I am sure our lady guest in the Flight Deck was impressed.

Every flight has its own share of ‘Threats and Errors’. By definition Threats are external factors beyond the control of the crew and Errors are mistakes made from within by the crew members themselves either collectively or individually. An error could turn into a threat and vice versa. The task of the crew is to mitigate threats and trap the errors made to make it a safe flight. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) carries out regular Line Orientated Safety Audits (LOSA) on member airlines to ensure that these principles of air safety are met.


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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

Published

14 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

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Features

Why Pi Day?

Published

14 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

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Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

Published

2 days ago

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2026/03/12

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A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.

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