Passengers trapped for six hours on a Dragonair plane on the tarmac at Hong Kong airport at the height of Typhoon Vicente went through a grim ordeal as the aircraft was rocked by the blasting winds.
Some started vomiting as the plane 'shook like a roller coaster', said an attendant on the flight.
Flight KA993 from Beijing had landed after typhoon signal 9 had been hoisted and could not be unloaded because of the storm.
The attendant said the fully-laden aircraft with 300 people on board, was parked in an outer bay, where passengers have to disembark and take a bus to the terminal.
'We could not open the door and there were no land staff as they were not supposed to work in a typhoon,' she said. 'All we could do was wait.'
The group waited until 5.30am when the land staff resumed work and helped them leave the plane.