Here is the Telegraph's
account of the story, from today's electronic edition (free subscription required to view the article). Excerpts:
The aircraft flew uncontrolled for three minutes, veering almost 180 degrees off course toward mountains and coming within seconds of a catastrophic stall.
No one in the four-person crew took any intervening action because they believed the Boeing 747-400 was being directed by the autopilot. They assumed the aircraft's unusual movements resulted from a local windshear effect, which their weather radar had warned them about.
A normal go-around would involve a climb to 3,000ft and a long right turn to take the aircraft back to begin another approach. But with no one controlling the aircraft, it failed to make the right turn, drifted to the left and ended up perilously close to a 3,100ft peak on the island of Lantau.
The jumbo then carried on climbing above its authorised altitude to 6,000ft, bringing it into potential conflict with other traffic.
Despite its steep rate of ascent, the uncommanded 240-ton aircraft was travelling at the dangerously low speed of 130 mph. It was saved from a stall, which analysts believe could have been fatal, because the left wing had dropped by 30 degrees - just enough to bring the nose down fractionally and enable a recovery. Worried air traffic controllers issued urgent instructions to bring the jet back on course.
But this had no immediate effect, as the crew - still under the impression that the autopilot was working - were not attempting to fly manually and simply keyed the navigation commands into the lifeless machine.
Investigators will be anxious to establish why the crew did not react to the aural warning that should accompany an autopilot disconnection. One theory is that it could have been drowned out by the windshear warning if they occurred simultaneously.
The aircraft's failure to comply with instructions may have been viewed by the crew as confirmation of the windshear warning's accuracy. Senior 747 pilots have been angered by what they regard as the low-key attitude taken to the incident by Cathay Pacific executives. In response to inquiries, the airline initially said only that a windshear event had taken place.
It was not until after Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department last week told the airline to issue a safety notice to all its pilots that Cathay officials admitted that "use of the autopilot" had been a problem.
One pilot said: "This was an extremely serious incident. Yet flight crew need to learn the lessons in case a similar situation arose. The fact we don't know exactly what happened makes it more likely that a repeat could occur."