From a drop zone in pre-handover Hong Kong to the new fad of indoor skydiving

With flight chambers or wind tunnels popping up all over Asia, could Hong Kong be next in line?

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A tourist tries the Indoor Skydiving facility on the cruise ship Ovation of the Seas at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 2:56pm, 27 Oct 2017Updated: 10:56pm, 28 Oct 2017

One of the perks of Britain’s 99-year lease of the New Territories was that the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force could roam the Hong Kong skies as it pleased.

Squadrons of British-ruled helicopters would undergo reconnaissance and observation missions along the Chinese border right up until the Force’s disbandment in 1993.

A Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force search and rescue exercise in the 1980s.

As if that were not thrill-inducing enough, some personnel would skydive over the city’s only drop zone: Shek Kong Airfield. The British Army was quite literally flying free.

“They would jump and free fall out of helicopters in Shek Kong,” recalled Captain West Wu Wai-hung, chief pilot of the Government Flying Service (GFS).

“There was a landing zone and you would see the arrow and pull on the parachute string – there was limited control back then.”

The British Army’s Red Devils parachute team showing their skills at the Shek Kong airfield in 1977.

Times were simpler in the ’80s. Nostalgic posts on outdated Hong Kong skydiving forums describe a long line of Boeing 747s taxiing for take-off at the airport, with a tiny four-seater Cessna 182 queuing up behind them. “We must have appeared like a little insect,” one said.

Captain Wu said such jumps were permitted due to the drop zone’s distance from the then Kai Tak airport.