Four Hong Kong Airlines passenger flights touched down at the city’s airport while the highest typhoon signal was still in force on Sunday, with experts saying such landings were possible under the right wind and operational conditions.
The four flights, which came from Chongqing, Tokyo, Beijing and Denpasar, landed between 2.25pm and 4.04pm. The average maximum sustained wind speed near the centre of Typhoon Wipha stood at around 140km/h (87mph) at the time.
They were the only flights to travel to Hong Kong’s airport amid the seven-hour window when the No 10 warning was in force. About 500 flights were cancelled on Sunday due to the typhoon.
Steven Dominique Cheung, chairman of the Hong Kong Professional Airline Pilots Association, said the No 10 signal itself had not factored into the landings.
Pilots instead looked at factors such as wind direction, wind speed and “crosswind limit”, which refers to the maximum side-on wind speed an aircraft can safely tolerate during take-off or landing, in addition to international and Hong Kong aviation regulations, he said.
“A large aircraft will have a higher crosswind limit, often at 40 knots, or about 80km/h,” he said.
