On 6 July 1998 at around 6.30am, Cathay Pacific flight CX889 became the first commercial passenger flight to touch down at Hong Kong International Airport – on time, but for the fact it was a year late.

The move from the congested Kai Tak Airport had been planned as one of the centrepieces of the return to Chinese sovereignty on 1 July 1997. But as is so often the case with big infrastructure projects, things overran.

In part, this was because HKIA was a very big project. It required three square kilometres of Chek Lap Kok (also the airport’s other name), off Lantau Island, to be levelled from its mountainous peak of 100 metres to just seven above sea level. Another smaller island, Lam Chau, was wholly enveloped by the reclamation of nine square kilometres of seabed. At that point, the airport and reclamation projects for transport links to the city 30 kilometres away grew Hong Kong’s landmass by one per cent.

It was an important statement of intent and Hong Kong’s ongoing ambition to be a hub long into the future. Notwithstanding the rapid growth in demand for air travel across Asia, Hong Kong is within five hours’ flying time of more than half of the world’s population.

The new airport had first been mooted in 1974, when the constraints of Kai Tak as a hub were becoming ever more obvious. As an inner-city airport, development was limited to a single runway, and even then 340,000 Hongkongers were affected by noise as aircraft passed low over built-up Kowloon. It made for great pictures, an exciting landing – but a bad night’s sleep.

The new airport project was finally given the go-ahead by Hong Kong’s then-governor Sir David Wilson in 1989. And while consultants predicted an opening by 1998, the Legislative Council pushed for it to be ready a year earlier for the handover. But given concerns about the ambitious scale and cost of the HK$155 billion project, a delay became inevitable after China and Britain finally signed a memorandum of understanding for the airport’s construction in 1991.

After a dedication ceremony on 2 July 1998, Chinese President Jiang Zemin became the first passenger to fly from the new airport. Eight hours later, Air Force One landed, making US President Bill Clinton the first passenger to arrive.