The name comes not from the airport but from the people who lost money before it existed. In 1912, businessmen Ho Kai and Au Tak formed the Kai Tak Investment Company to reclaim land in Kowloon for development. The scheme failed. The government acquired the land instead and converted it into an airfield. In 1924, Harry Abbott opened the Abbott School of Aviation there. By 1928, it was a proper grass strip used by the RAF and several flying clubs — precursors to the Hong Kong Aviation Club, which still operates today. During the Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945, prisoners of war were forced to build concrete runways on the site. In the process, the historic wall of the Kowloon Walled City and the 45-metre Sung Wong Toi — a memorial for the last Song dynasty emperor — were destroyed for building materials.

The defining physical feature of Kai Tak was made by filling in Victoria Harbour. In 1958, a new runway was completed on reclaimed land, extending into Kowloon Bay at a southeast-northwest orientation. It was 2,529 metres at opening and grew to 3,390 metres by the time the airport closed in 1998. The surrounding geography made every operation a calculation. Less than four kilometres to the north and northeast, a range of hills reaches 2,000 feet. Hong Kong Island's peaks to the south rise to 2,100 feet. The runway jutted into the harbour like a pier, its northern end flanked by apartment blocks, its southern edge in open water. The noise was relentless. Buildings in Kowloon had height restrictions because of the approach path. A night curfew ran from 11:30pm to 6:30am. The airport and the city had grown into each other over decades, and neither could escape the other.

No approach in commercial aviation history has been more discussed, simulated, and mourned than Runway 13 at Kai Tak. The Instrument Guidance System installed in 1974 was offset 47 degrees from the runway heading — technically a localizer-type directional aid rather than a full ILS, because a standard instrument landing system was impossible given the required turn. Inbound aircraft flew a wide arc from the southwest, lined up on the IGS guidance beam, descended to 2,500 feet before disconnecting autopilot, then dropped below 1,000 feet approaching Checkerboard Hill. Upon spotting the painted hill, the crew made the visual right turn. Entry at approximately 650 feet, exit at 140 feet, runway ahead. During typhoons, crosswinds from the northeast made the final turn genuinely dangerous. The wind changed direction as the aircraft rotated, shifting a headwind into a crosswind mid-turn. Plane spotters gathered on the rooftops of Kowloon City to watch. The approach was used most of the time because of prevailing winds. There was no alternative.

The geography that made Kai Tak dramatic also made it deadly. From 1947 to 1994, crashes killed 131 people. The deadliest was on 24 August 1965, when a US Marine Corps C-130 Hercules crashed shortly after takeoff from Runway 13, killing 59 of the 71 on board. A Thai Airways Caravelle went into Victoria Harbour on 30 June 1967 in a rainstorm; 24 people died. On 4 November 1993, a China Airlines Boeing 747-400 overran the runway in typhoon conditions and ended up submerged beyond the runway end — all 396 passengers and crew sustained only minor injuries, a near-miracle. The airport never had a catastrophic midfield collision or a runway incursion fatality. What it had was an approach that demanded everything a crew could give, every single time.

On 6 July 1998, the director of civil aviation Richard Siegel gave a brief speech in the control tower and ended with: 'Goodbye Kai Tak, and thank you.' He dimmed the lights, then turned them off. The last commercial departure had been Cathay Pacific CX251 to London Heathrow, a Boeing 747-400, which lifted off Runway 13 at 12:02am. A ferry flight to Chek Lap Kok followed at 1:05am. The new airport opened the same morning. The terminal later served as a go-kart track, a bowling alley, a mall, and a snooker hall before being demolished in the mid-2000s. On the reclaimed runway, a cruise terminal opened in 2013 at the runway tip. A Kai Tak MTR station opened in 2020. The Kai Tak Sports Park, built on the former airport land, opened in March 2025 with a 50,000-seat stadium — the largest sports venue in Hong Kong. The runway number, 13, is painted on the park's ground. On 30 March 2025, Cathay Pacific flew a commemorative flight — CX8100 — over Victoria Harbour to mark 100 years since Kai Tak's history began.