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Gary Cheung

Scheduled seaplane services were a vital fixture in Victoria Harbour for more than two decades starting from the 1930s, and some of the  floatplanes flying between Hong Kong and Macau had a special mission - shuttling gold between the two colonies.
James Ng,  an expert on Hong Kong's aviation history and a  member of the Hong Kong Collectors Society, said the seaplane service was  introduced when the Hong Kong Keeper, a plane owned by Pan American Airways, flew from Macau  on April 28, 1937.
The seaplane picked up passengers in Macau who travelled on another Pan Am seaplane, China Keeper, from San Francisco to Manila via Macau. 'Passengers who intended to travel to mainland China took other flights in Hong Kong after arriving in the city,' Mr Ng said.
'Pan Am's seaplane flight was an American  airline's first provision of a commercial flight service between Hong Kong, the United States and China,' he said.
It took about an hour for a flight between Hong Kong and  Macau.
Pan Am operated two flights every week until Japan's invasion  in 1941.
Seaplanes were more common in the period because they required  only a stretch of water for a runway.
'Seaplanes are part of the collective memory of Hong Kong and have a long and dynamic cultural history,' said Michael Agopsowicz,  who plans to reintroduce the seaplane service  to Macau.
Macao Air Transport Company (Matco), which was set up by entrepreneurs Sydney de Kantzow  and Roy Farrell  in the late 1940s, transported gold and a few passengers  between the two cities until the early 1960s. The pair  were also founders of Cathay Pacific.
According to the Cathay Pacific website, Catalina seaplanes were brought into service  with the airline in late 1946, primarily to shuttle gold between Hong Kong and Macau.
The lack of an airstrip in Macau in those days meant landing on water was the only option.
On July 16, 1948, a Catalina flying boat, Miss Macao, which was chartered to Matco for flights between Hong Kong and Macau, became the world's first commercial victim of an air hijacking.
Miss Macao was making a routine flight that day  with 26 passengers and crew when four hijackers demanded that the plane be taken to a remote area. The hijackers had heard tempting reports of cargoes of gold bullion and planned to hold up the Catalina and divert it to another location where it could be looted.
But the  plan failed when one of the hijackers shot the pilot, whose body slumped across the controls,  causing  the aircraft to dive into the sea. Twenty-six people died. The only survivor was the leader of the hijackers.
Mr Ng said the seaplane service  operated between Hong Kong and Macau until the late 1950s. 'Seaplane services became obsolete after the opening of the Kai Tak runway in 1958,' said Mr Ng, author of a book on Hong Kong's aviation history.



Glory days of flying boats before Kai Tak runway opened