Very interesting documentary - Building Hong Kong's Airport

[Howie]

Just a recommendation to fellow SA members. You should check out Extreme Engineering - Building Hong Kong's Airport.

- They built an island by bridging two islands moving 600 million tonnes of rock.
- They built the world's longest suspension bridge.
- They built a high speed train network to get from the airport to hk island
- A super highway which goes under ground through tunnels and over water was built to get to the main island.

Then there's the airport itself All this done in 7 years before the China handover of Hong Kong... working 24 hours a day. If that ain't extreme engineering i don't know what is.

For those of you who have bittorrent, here's the link.

http://isohunt.com/torrents.php?ihq=ext ... xt=&op=and

[Howie]

Think AAL had it's problems... should check out the opening day of the HK airport. The communication link went down, the flight information system went down, the robotic sorting system for cargo went down and they had to hand sort all the cargo, then a few weeks after they had a typhoon and a plane flipped over.

[AG]

I was only in Hong Kong the other week. The airport project is absolutely amazing.

It holds at least three world records:
-World's largest airport terminal
-World's most expensive airport project
-World's largest manmade island

Chek Lap Kok Airport is named after the island that was ripped out and flattened to build the airport.

The project included:
-West Kowloon Reclamation
-A series of new freeways
-22 tunnels, including the Western Cross Harbour Tunnel
-Building the world's 6th longest suspension bridge (Tsing Ma Bridge), and the world's longest carrying both rail and road traffic.
-Two other major bridges including the Ting Kau Bridge
-A new town to serve the airport called Tung Chung
-An MTR rail link to Tung Chung and Airport. The Airport Express runs at 135km/h along Lan Tau Island
-The airport itself
-Other related projects such as the new Shipping Port

The area of the project is enormous. The Western Kowloon reclamation is almost 30km from the airport.

I have some pictures from my trip from Hong Kong relating to these areas.

The entire area you see in this picture is part of the West Kowloon Reclamation:


Some crappy images while crossing the Tsing Ma Bridge:






This is Route 3 Highway, which is the main highway route from Hong Kong to the Airport via Nam Cheong and Tsing Yi. In the distance is Tseun Wan, with Nina Tower being the tallest:


The MTR's Tung Chung and Airport Express lines run parallel with the North Lantau Expressway for the last 10 or so kilometres:


Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the airport itself. It's an absolute marvel of architecture. It was built in 1998, and it still looks more modern than Adelaide's new one.

And yes I did use the new Adelaide Airport when I left and arrived back in Adelaide.

[Howie]

Opps... sixth largest suspension bridge. My bad, i was just taking it from the doco.

But it's just astounding how much effort went into this project. Thx for the pics mate.

[Al]

Here're a few I found;

The bridge.


They had a 1902 Wright Glider replica inside the terminal and I think it was in celebration of 100 years of flight. Amazing how far we've come since then.


From the above pic to these!




Some people must have slept all night at the terminal.








Just for the hell of it... here's a pic of Kuala Lumpur's impressive airport.


It was amazing to note the level of security at these airports. When I visited them, they had heavily arm patrol officers (ie. submachine guns and body armour) walking around ready to whoop ass. I thought about taking a photo of the muscle at HKIA but they gave me a funny look when I reached for my camera in my bag so I decided to leave it.

[AG]

Should see the guys at customs at HKIA and even security. They're dressed like army officers, full on!