Farewells and Reunions at Kai Tak

An airport is designed to move people onward, yet the public memory of Kai Tak often begins at the edge of that movement: the person being seen off, the relative being met, the last look through a window. The Government Records Service described its archival exhibition on Kai Tak as a way to revisit a place where people reunited with or bade farewell to family and friends. The exhibition recalls how departures and reunions became part of the airport’s civic meaning, with families meeting at the terminal and seeing one another off.

A photograph by Hong Kong photojournalist Vincent Yu, taken on 6 July 1998, records people on Kwun Tong Pier watching a Boeing 747 depart on Kai Tak’s closing day. The image, presented by the Hong Kong Photographic Culture Association, places viewers on the waterfront rather than inside the terminal. The plane is moving away; the gathered people are looking after it. The photograph turns the airport’s final operational day into a public scene of farewell, with the waterfront crowd watching the aircraft leave.

Kai Tak closed on 6 July 1998, ending 73 years of airport operations. A government exhibition drew together plans, maps, photographs and video to review the airport’s changing appearance and development. Plans and maps trace how the airport was built, while photographs and video show its changing surroundings and final hours. Families can recognise a shared setting in these images, even as each journey belonged to a different story.

The airport’s public image can be spectacular—the approach over Kowloon, the low runway and the aircraft close to the city. The exhibition recalls reunions and farewells, while a dated photograph shows a group watching one aircraft depart. Together, they show how the airport’s closure turned private travel routines into a public memory.