Travellers' Checks | From Hong Kong to Kota Kinabalu – when it took Cathay Pacific nearly 10 hours to get there
- This year is the first since 1949 that no Hong Kong-based airline has flown a scheduled service to Borneo
- Plus, Hawaii’s Kahala Hotel & Resort to open in the Japanese city of Yokohama, with a focus on omotenashi
Flying from Hong Kong to Cathay Pacific’s three destinations in the Crown Colony of North Borneo in the early 1950s must have been quite an adventure. A flight left Kai Tak airport every Wednesday at 6.30am, arrived in Manila at 9.45am, then took off again at 11am, crossing the Sulu Sea and arriving in Sandakan – once known as Little Hong Kong, due to its large Cantonese-speaking population – at 2.45pm.
By 3.30pm, the twin-engined DC-3 was wheels-up and heading west over the vast Borneo jungle, and past Mount Kinabalu towards Jesselton, where it was scheduled to touch down at 4.30pm. After a brief stopover, the final leg was a 45-minute hop down the coast, to the island of Labuan, just in time for dinner.
This early Cathay Pacific flight reflected Hong Kong’s lingering historical ties with the then-recently dissolved British North Borneo – of which all three ports were once part – but by 1955 both Sandakan and Jesselton had been cut. By 1958, Cathay was flying its new 70-seat, four-engine DC-6B non-stop to Labuan, but the island, which was once expected to rival Singapore as a business hub, was dropped in favour of a return to Jesselton in 1961. Cathay continued that service, with Jesselton renamed Kota Kinabalu in 1967, until 1986, the year after Dragonair chose Kota Kinabalu for its inaugural flight, in July 1985.
Now called Cathay Dragon, the carrier stopped flying to Kota Kinabalu early last year, which means that 2019 will, barring any unexpected news, be the first full calendar year since 1949 that no Hong Kong-based airline has flown a scheduled service to Borneo.
AirAsia still flies twice daily from Hong Kong to Kota Kinabalu, however, and all three former Cathay destinations can be found in the Sabah chapter of the Lonely Planet Borneo guide, the fifth edition of which was published last month. You can download the whole book as a PDF file for US$27.99 or the Sabah chapter alone for US$4.95 at shop.lonelyplanet.com.
Hawaiian hospitality comes to Japan with opening of Kahala Hotel & Resort Yokohama next summer
