Hi John
Thanks for the memories. I worked in Kai Tak tower on a morning shift on the 6th July 1998, the last day of ops there, and then a morning shift on Approach the next day at CLK on it's first day of operations. I must say that the first day at CLK was quite interesting as we were operating a new radar system, totally rearranged airspace, and quite new procedures. We had gone through a bit of conversion training, but my colleagues and myself at CLK just had to compromise as we went along. Plenty of support from management of course.
It interets me from a Controller's point of view that as far as the flight crews were concerned, we (ATC) at Kai Tak could do no wrong, and that comes out in your interviews. However it was the same guys and gals that lugged their headsets over to the new airport in July '98, and it soon got back to the same old criticisms and niggles that one gets everywhere else. Sure, in the almost 9 years since CLK openned, some of the original Kai Tak crew have gone, and we have lot's of new local people here now, but they are still being trained and prepared mainly by people like myself. So the leopard didn't change it's spots, just the tree that it hung out in.