Night Watch: The reason a/c were holding was because crews did not want to fly through weather to get to the airfield where the weather was for most (but not all) of the the morning quite good. Any aircraft that got close to the airfield got approaches asap. Most sectors ended up overloaded most of the morning with all aircraft deviating and asking for new headings. The early part of the morning also affected by a mainland active danger area near Macau.
VHHH did not have approaches for a short while only due to CB across base leg and the need to route through ZGSZ and VMMC arrival and departure routes to get to our approach - VHHH cannot provide terrain separation assurance outside of our own FIR - co-ordination load and knock effect for VMMC and ZGSZ. Again - if the crews do not want or to fly through the weather how can ATC keep the place running efficiently?
gweilo airlines YAAFM and as you seem to get your info from GF - so is he or she.
BTW IMHO - HK has some excellent locally trained controllers of both sexes.
flatfilea4