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Kai Tak Airport

Kai Tak Airport was an international airport of Hong Kong from 1925 until 1998. Officially known as Hong Kong International Airport from 1954 to 6 July 1998, it is often referred to as Hong Kong International Airport, Kai Tak, or simply Kai Tak and Kai Tak International Airport, to distinguish it from its successor, Chek Lap Kok International Airport, built on reclaimed and levelled land around the islands of Chek Lap Kok and Lam Chau, 30 km to the west.

Officially, Kai Tak Airport held the ICAO code of VHXX, but for logistical reasons during the transition to the new airport, it also temporarily used the ICAO code of VHHX, which is also the code used by the flight simulation community to virtually represent the airport.

Because of the geography of the area, with water on three sides of the runway, Kowloon City's residential apartment complexes to the north-west and 2,000-plus ft (2,000 ft-plus) mountains to the north-east of the airport, aircraft could not fly over the mountains and quickly drop in for a final approach. Instead, aircraft had to fly above Victoria Harbour and Kowloon City, passing north of Mong Kok's Bishop Hill. After passing Bishop Hill, pilots would see Checkerboard Hill with a large orange-and-white checkerboard pattern. Once the pattern was sighted and identified, the aircraft made a low-altitude (sub-600 ft; 600 ft) 47-degree right-hand turn, ending with a short final approach and touchdown. For pilots, this airport was technically demanding, as the approach could not be flown by aircraft instruments, but had to be flown visually because of the right-hand turn required.

The airport was home to Hong Kong's international carrier Cathay Pacific, as well as regional carrier Dragonair (since 2016 known as Cathay Dragon), freight airline Air Hong Kong and Hong Kong Airways. The airport was also home to the former RAF Kai Tak and the Hong Kong Aviation Club.

Geographic environment

Kai Tak was located on the eastern side of Kowloon Bay in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The area is surrounded by rugged mountains. Less than 4 km to the north and northeast of the former runway 13 threshold is a range of hills reaching an elevation of 2000 ft. To the east of the former 31 threshold, the hills are less than 3 km away. Immediately to the south of the airport is Victoria Harbour, and farther south is Hong Kong Island with hills up to 2100 ft.

When Kai Tak closed, there was only one runway in use, numbered 13/31 and oriented southeast-northwest (134/314 degrees true, 136/316 degrees magnetic). The runway was made by reclaiming land from the harbour and was extended several times after its initial construction. The runway was 2529 m when it was opened in 1958 and 3390 m long when the airport closed in 1998. During the period between 1945 and 1955 the airport used a different 13/31 alongside a crossing 07/25. These two runways were 4756 by and 5420 by.

At the northern end of the runway at closure, buildings rose to six stories just across a major multi-lane arterial road. The other three sides of the runway were surrounded by Victoria Harbour. The low-altitude turning manoeuvre before the shortened final approach was so close to these buildings that passengers could spot television sets in the apartments: "...as the plane banked sharply to the right for landing ... the people watching television in the nearby apartments seemed an unsettling arm's length away."

1925 to 1930s
The story of Kai Tak started in 1912 when two businessmen, Ho Kai and Au Tak, formed the Kai Tak Investment Company to reclaim land in Kowloon for development. The land was acquired by the government for use as an airfield after the business plan failed.

In 1924, Harry Abbott opened the Abbott School of Aviation on that piece of land. Soon, it became a small grass strip runway airport used by the RAF, and by several flying clubs which, over time grew to include the Hong Kong Flying Club, the Far East Flying Training School, and the Aero Club of Hong Kong; these exist today as an amalgamation known as the Hong Kong Aviation Club. In 1928, a concrete slipway was built for seaplanes that used the adjoining Kowloon Bay. The first control tower and hangar at Kai Tak were built in 1935. In 1936, the first domestic airline in Hong Kong was established.

World War II
Hong Kong fell into the hands of the Japanese on 12 December 1941, during World War II. In 1942, the Japanese army expanded Kai Tak, using many Allied prisoner-of-war (POW) labourers, building two concrete runways, 13/31 and 07/25. Numerous POW diary entries exist recalling the gruelling work and long hours working on building Kai Tak. During the process, the historic wall of the Kowloon Walled City and the 45 m tall Sung Wong Toi, a memorial for the last Song dynasty emperor, were destroyed for materials. A 2001 Environmental Study recommended that a new memorial be erected for the Sung Wong Toi rock and other remnants of the Kowloon area before Kai Tak.

1945 to 1970s

From September 1945 to August 1946 the airport was a Royal Navy shore base, "HMS Nabcatcher", the name previously attached to a Mobile Naval Air Base for the Fleet Air Arm. On 1 April 1947, a Royal Naval Air Station, HMS Flycatcher, was commissioned there.

A plan to turn Kai Tak into a modern airport was released in 1954. By 1957 runway 13/31 had been extended to 1664 m, while runway 7/25 remained 1450 m long; night operations were not allowed. Bristol Britannia 102s took over BOAC's London-Tokyo flights in the summer of 1957 and were the largest airliners scheduled to the old airport (Boeing Stratocruisers never flew there). In 1958 the new NW/SE 8350 ft runway extending into Kowloon Bay was completed by land reclamation. The two old runways were removed with footprints used by the apron and terminal building. The passenger terminal was completed in 1962. The runway was extended in the mid-1970s to 11130 ft, the final length. This extension was completed in June 1974, but the full length of the runway was not in use until 31 December 1975, as construction of the new Airport Tunnel had kept the northwestern end of the runway closed.

In 1955 Kai Tak Airport was featured in the film The Night My Number Came Up.

An Instrument Guidance System (IGS) was installed in 1974 to aid landing on runway 13. Use of the airport under adverse conditions was greatly increased.

In the 1970s, the airport's increasing traffic and growth of high-density developments around it raised concerns about the potential loss of life should a crash occur, though no serious accidents happened throughout its history of operations.

Overcrowding in the 1980s and 1990s
The growth of Hong Kong also put a strain on the airport's capacity. Its usage was close to, and for some time exceeded, the designed capacity. The airport was designed to handle 24 million passengers per year, but in 1996, Kai Tak handled 29.5 million passengers, plus 1.56 million tonnes of freight, making it the third busiest airport in the world in terms of international passenger traffic, and busiest in terms of international cargo throughput. Moreover, clearance requirements for aircraft takeoffs and landings made it necessary to limit the height of buildings that could be built in Kowloon. While Kai Tak was initially located far away from residential areas, the expansion of both residential areas and the airport resulted in Kai Tak being close to residential areas. This caused serious noise and engine pollution for nearby residents and put height restrictions, which were removed after Kai Tak closed. A night curfew from 11:30 pm to 6:30 am in the early morning also hindered operations.

As a result, in the late 1980s, the Hong Kong Government began searching for alternative locations for a new airport in Hong Kong to replace the ageing airport. After deliberating on several locations, including the south side of Hong Kong Island, the government decided to build the airport on the island of Chek Lap Kok off Lantau Island. The new airport is located far away from Hong Kong's main residential areas, conducive to minimising the dangers of a major crash and also reducing the nuisance of noise pollution. A huge number of resources were mobilised to build this new airport, part of the ten programmes in Hong Kong's Airport Core Programme.

The Regal Meridien Hong Kong Airport Hotel (now the Regal Oriental Hotel), linked to the passenger terminal by a footbridge spanning Prince Edward Road, opened on 19 July 1982. This was Hong Kong's first airport hotel and comprised 380 rooms including 47 suites. The hotel still exists, but the footbridge (which was connected to the passenger terminal) has been demolished. It is one of the few remaining buildings related to Kai Tak Airport.

Closure and legacy of Kai Tak Airport
The new airport in Chek Lap Kok officially opened on 6 July 1998 to replace the functions of Kai Tak Airport. All of the essential airport supplies and vehicles that were left in the old airport for operation (some of the non-essential ones had already been transported to the new airport) were transported to Chek Lap Kok in one early morning with a single massive move, with a police escort.

On 6 July 1998 at 3:30 AM local, after the final aircraft departed for Chek Lap Kok, Kai Tak was finally retired as an airport.

 * The last arrival: Dragonair KA841 from Chongqing (Airbus A320-200) landed Runway 13 at 23:38 (11:38 p.m.)
 * The last scheduled commercial flight: Cathay Pacific CX251 to London–Heathrow (Boeing 747-400) took off from Runway 13 at 00:02 (12:02 a.m.)
 * The last departure: Cathay Pacific CX3340 ferry flight to the new airport at Chek Lap Kok (Airbus A340-300) took off from Runway 13 at 01:05 (1:05 a.m.)

A ceremony celebrating the end of the airport was held inside the control tower after the final flight took off. Richard Siegel, then-director of civil aviation, gave a brief speech ending with the words "Goodbye Kai Tak, and thank you", before dimming the lights briefly and then turning them off.

After the last plane or last commercial flight, a Cathay Pacific Airbus A340-300, took off from Kai Tak International Airport to the new Hong Kong International Airport at 01:28 HKT, Kai Tak was permanently closed, and its ICAO and IATA airport codes were reassigned to the new airport at Chek Lap Kok.

The new airport at Chek Lap Kok opened at 06:00 (6:00 a.m.) on 6 July 1998 with the arrival of Cathay Pacific Flight 889 (nicknamed Polar 1) from New York–JFK. The first week of operations was disrupted by a sequence of IT failures based around software bugs in the Flight Information Display System. This in turn disrupted baggage handling and airbridge allocation. But by the end of the first week these challenges, and other teething problems, were largely resolved, and the new airport was exceeding Kai Tak performance measures. The exception was the new airport's main air cargo terminal built and operated by HACTL as a franchisee. The terminal faced major difficulties in coming into operation on 6 July, such that it closed again on 7 July to enable the franchisee to implement a major recovery programme. The disruption this caused to air cargo operations at the new airport led the government to temporarily reactivate Kai Tak's cargo terminal for a month. During this period, the airport was given temporary ICAO code VHHX.

The Kai Tak passenger terminal later housed government offices, automobile dealerships and showrooms, gaming arcades, a mall, a go-kart racecourse, a bowling alley, a snooker hall, a mini-golf range and other recreational facilities. In the mid-2000s, the passenger terminal and hangars were demolished. Many aviation enthusiasts were upset at the demise of Kai Tak because of the unique runway 13 approach. As private aviation was no longer allowed at Chek Lap Kok (having moved to Sek Kong Airfield), some enthusiasts had lobbied to keep about 1 km of the Kai Tak runway for general aviation, but the suggestion was rejected as the Government had planned to build a new cruise terminal at Kai Tak.

The Hong Kong stop of Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love World Tour was held on the airport's apron on 25 January 1999.

Until its retirement in 2018, the name Kai Tak was one of the names used in the lists of tropical cyclone names in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Submitted by Hong Kong, it was used four times.

BMW used to test its hydrogen cars on the former Kai Tak apron area, while a golf course was set up at the end of Runway 31.

Terminals and facilities
The Kai Tak airport consisted of a linear passenger terminal building with a car park attached at the rear. There were eight boarding gates attached to the terminal building.

A freight terminal was located on the south side of the east apron and diagonally from the passenger terminal building. Due to the limited space, the fuel tank farm was located between the passenger terminal and HAECO maintenance hangar.

Companies based at Kai Tak

 * Cathay Pacific, which operated a mixed Airbus, Boeing and some Lockheed all-wide-body fleet of one hundred aircraft, providing scheduled services to the rest of Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, Europe, South Africa and North America.
 * Dragonair
 * Air Hong Kong Limited
 * Hong Kong Airways (until late 1950s when bought by Cathay Pacific)
 * British Asia Airways (due to relations between PRC and ROC)

Other tenants included:

 * Hong Kong Aviation Club
 * Government Flying Service
 * DFS Kai Tak Market
 * Häagen-Dazs
 * Tin Tin Restaurant

Runway 13 arrival

The landing approach for planes using runway 13 at Kai Tak was considered spectacular and was infamous, not just amongst aviation enthusiasts but amongst the general public as well. Flight simulator charts, which are based on the real charts used at the airport, give an outline of the procedures used on approach to Kai Tak Airport.

Checkerboard approach
The Checkerboard approach (also spelled as Chequerboard approach) initially begins to the south-west of the airport, with aircraft flying westbound at a minimum altitude of 6000 feet. At this beginning stage of the approach, the aircraft should be passing above Cheung Chau – a small island just off Lantau Island. After that, the aircraft was required to proceed up to "Point Golf", which was on the south side of Lantau Island and directly south of the current Chek Lap Kok Airport. Approaching aircraft then had to make a right-hand U-turn to intercept the localiser for the Runway 13 IGS, which generally happened above the current Chek Lap Kok Airport site. The IGS (abbreviation of Instrument Guidance System) was effectively a localizer type directional aid, which was offset from the runway heading by 47°, which aided aircraft by guiding them via radio signals, much like an instrument landing system. At roughly 2500 feet, the autopilot was disconnected, and the rest of the approach was flown manually. The aircraft then descended below 1000 feet and shortly afterwards reached Kowloon Tsai Park and its small hill (Checkerboard Hill). Upon reaching the small hill above Kowloon Tsai Park, which was painted with a large "aviation orange" and white checkerboard (22.335°N, 114.18444°W), used as a visual reference point on the final approach (in addition to the middle marker on the Instrument Guidance System), the pilot needed to make a 47° visual right turn to line up with the runway and complete the final leg. The aircraft would be just 2 nmi from touchdown, at a height of less than 1000 ft when the turn was made. Typically the plane would enter the final right turn at a height of about 650 ft and exit it at a height of 140 ft to line up with the runway. That demanding manoeuvre became known in the aviation community as the "Hong Kong Turn" or the "Checkerboard Turn". For many airline passengers on planes approaching and landing on Runway 13 at Kai Tak Airport, it became referred to as the "Kai Tak Heart Attack", because they were often frightened to be turning at such a proximity to the ground, which, at less than 150 ft, or 45 metres, was generally less than even the Boeing 767's wingspan, which is considered a medium-size airliner. The turn was so low that passengers could see television sets running in people's residences near the airport.

Handling the runway 13 approach was difficult enough with normal crosswinds because, even if the wind direction was constant, it was changing relative to the aircraft as the plane made the 47° visual right turn, meaning that what would be a headwind heading directly east on the IGS would become a crosswind and begin to push the aircraft over and off the runway alignment without correction. The landing would become even more challenging when crosswinds from the northeast were strong and gusty during typhoons. The mountain range northeast of the airport also made the wind vary greatly in both speed and direction. Watching large aircraft banking at low altitudes and taking big crab angles during their final approaches was popular with plane spotters. Despite the difficulty, the Runway 13 approach was used most of the time due to the prevailing wind direction in Hong Kong.

Because of the turn required during the final approach, ILS was not available for runway 13 and landings had to follow a visual approach. This made the approach unusable in low visibility conditions.

Stonecutters' Approach
Alongside the Chequerboard approach, there was a lesser-known approach into Kai Tak that led aircraft over the Stonecutters' NDB at a heading of 040 and led into a ~90° turn to line up on Runway 13. This approach was used extremely infrequently, since the Chequerboard approach had a localiser and glide slope to work with, and NDBs are very rarely used in commercial aviation today. It generally can be assumed this approach was used when the localiser and glide slope were offline for maintenance.

Runway 13 departure
Runway 13 was the preferred departure runway for heavy aircraft due to the clear departure path, opposite that of the Runway 31 departure. Heavy aircraft on departure using runway 13 would often need nearly the entire length of the runway, particularly during summer days due to the air temperature.

Runway 31 arrival
Runway 31 approaches and landings were similar to other airports in which ILS was available. Runway 31 is the reciprocal of 13, ie. it occupied the same physical space but denoted a runway facing the inverse direction, a northwesterly heading of about 310°, as opposed to about 130° for runway 13. The approach path towards the runway from the southeast passed within 300 m of Heng Fa Chuen on Hong Kong Island.

Runway 31 was also used for landing early in the morning for noise abatement.

Runway 31 departure
When lined up for takeoff on runway 31, a range of hills including 1500 ft Beacon Hill were directly in front of the aircraft. The pilots had to make a sharp 65-degree left turn soon after takeoff to avoid the hills (i.e. the reverse of a Runway 13 landing). If a runway change occurred due to a wind change from runway 13 departures to runway 31 departures, planes that were loaded to the maximum payload for runway 13 departures had to return to the terminal to offload some goods to provide enough climbing clearance over buildings during a runway 31 departure.

Private aviation
The Hong Kong Aviation Club formerly held most of its activities at Kai Tak, where it had hangars and other facilities.

The club moved most of its aircraft to Shek Kong Airfield in 1994 after the hours for general aviation at Kai Tak were sharply reduced, to two hours per morning, as of 1 July that year. Kai Tak closed to fixed-wing traffic in 1998. The club ended its helicopter activities at Kai Tak on 9 July 2017. The Kai Tak location, which it was able to use all days of the week, meant that helicopter training took less time compared to fixed-wing training, as usage at Shek Kong is restricted to weekends.

Incidents and accidents

Many planes crashed at Kai Tak due to poor weather and hard approaches:

 * On 25 January 1947, a Philippine Air Lines DC-3 aircraft crashed into Mount Parker, killing four crew members.
 * On 21 December 1948, a China National Aviation Corporation Douglas DC-4 struck Basalt Island after a descent through clouds. 35 were killed.
 * On 24 February 1949, a Cathay Pacific Douglas DC-3 crashed into a hillside near Braemar Reservoir after aborting an approach in poor visibility and attempting to go around. All 23 on board were killed.
 * On 11 March 1951, a Pacific Overseas Airlines Douglas DC-4 crashed after takeoff into the hills between Mount Butler and Mount Parker on Hong Kong Island. The captain of the aircraft allegedly failed to execute the turn left operation after departure. 24 were killed.
 * On 9 April 1951, a Siamese Airways Douglas DC-3 lost control of its turn while attempting a night-time visual approach. The captain allegedly allowed the aircraft to lose speed while attempting to turn quickly. 16 were killed.
 * On 19 April 1961, a U.S. military Douglas DC-3 (C-47 Skytrain) bound for Formosa crashed into Mount Parker after takeoff. Of the 16 on board, 15 were killed.
 * On 24 August 1965, a United States Marine Corps C-130 Hercules crashed shortly after takeoff from runway 13, killing 59 of the 71 people on board. This was the deadliest crash at Kai Tak.
 * On 30 June 1967, a Thai Airways International Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle III crashed into Victoria Harbour while trying to land during a torrential rainstorm. A typhoon was some 150 mi NW of Hong Kong, but the colony was not closed down in preparation for the typhoon. The co-pilot, who was flying the aircraft and unable to see the runway due to the heavy rain, allegedly made an abrupt heading change, causing the aircraft to enter a high rate of descent and crash into the harbour to the right of the runway. The starboard wing snapped off on impact, and the aircraft rolled onto its starboard side, halving the number of escape routes. 24 were killed, but only 23 bodies were recovered at the scene. The final body was recovered after it was seen floating in the harbour six weeks later.
 * On 2 September 1977, a Transmeridian Air Cargo Canadair CL-44 lost control and crashed into the Tathong Channel following a fire shortly after takeoff. The no. 4 engine was said to have failed, causing an internal fire in the engine and the aircraft fuel system that eventually resulted in a massive external fire. Four were killed.
 * On 9 March 1978, China Airlines Flight 831 was hijacked. The hijacker (the flight engineer of the flight) demanded to be taken to Mainland China (the airline was of the Republic of China in Taiwan, not the People's Republic of China, which controlled the mainland). The hijack lasted less than a day, and the hijacker was killed.
 * On 7 February 1980, a China Airlines Boeing 747-200 B-1866 (later B-18255) had a tail-strike incident while landing at Kai Tak International Airport en route to Taipei from Stockholm Arlanda Airport via King Abdulaziz International Airport and Kai Tak. The aircraft was improperly repaired which caused it to break up in flight on 25 May 2002 while flying to Chek Lap Kok Airport
 * On 18 October 1983, a Lufthansa Boeing 747 freighter abandoned takeoff after engine no. 2 malfunctioned, probably at speed exceeding V1 (the takeoff/abort decision point). The aircraft overran the runway onto soft ground and sustained severe damage. The three crew on board suffered minor injuries.
 * On 31 August 1988, the right outboard flap of a CAAC Airlines Hawker Siddeley Trident operating Flight 301 hit approach lights of runway 31 while landing under rain and fog. The right main landing gear then struck a lip and collapsed, causing the aircraft to run off the runway and slip into the harbour. 7 were killed.
 * On 4 November 1993, a China Airlines Boeing 747-400, operating Flight 605, overran the runway while landing amid gale-force winds during a typhoon. Despite the plane's unstable approach, the captain did not go around. The aircraft touched down more than 2/3 down the runway and was unable to stop before the runway ended. Although the aircraft ended up submerged beyond the end of the runway, there were only 23 minor injuries amongst the 396 passengers and crew.
 * On 23 September 1994, a Heavylift Cargo Airlines Lockheed L-100-30 Hercules lost control shortly after takeoff from runway 13. The pitch control system of one of its propellers was said to have failed. Six were killed.

2002 blueprint
In October 1998, the Government drafted a plan for the Kai Tak Airport site, involving the reclamation of 219 ha of land. After receiving many objections, the Government scaled down the reclamation to 166 ha in June 1999. The Territorial Development Department commenced a new study on the development of the area in November 1999, entitled "Feasibility Studies on the Revised Southeast Kowloon Development Plan", and a new public consultation exercise was conducted in May 2000, resulting in the land reclamation being further scaled down to 133 ha. The new plans based on the feasibility studies were passed by the chief executive in July 2002. There were plans for the site of Kai Tak to be used for housing development, which was once projected to house around 240,000–340,000 residents. Due to calls from the public to protect the harbour and participate more deeply in future town planning, the scale and plan of the project were yet to be decided. There were also plans for a railway station and a maintenance centre in the proposed plan for the Sha Tin to Central Link.

There were also proposals to dredge the runway to form several islands for housing, to build a terminal capable of accommodating cruise ships the size of Queen Mary 2, and more recently, to house the Hong Kong Sports Institute, as well as several stadiums, in the case that the institute was forced to move so that the equestrian events of the 2008 Summer Olympics could be held at its present site in Sha Tin.

On 9 January 2004, the Court of Final Appeal ruled that no reclamation plan for Victoria Harbour could be introduced unless it passed an "overriding public interest" test. Subsequently, the Government abandoned these plans.

Kai Tak Planning Review
The Government set up a "Kai Tak Planning Review" in July 2004 for further public consultation. Several plans were presented.

June 2006 blueprint
A new plan for the redevelopment of Kai Tak was issued by the government in June 2006. Under these proposals, hotels would be scattered throughout the 328 ha site, and flats aimed at housing 86,000 new residents were proposed.

Other features of the plan included two cruise terminals and a large stadium.

October 2006 blueprint
The Planning Department unveiled a major reworking of its plans for the old Kai Tak airport site on 17 October 2006, containing "a basket of small measures designed to answer a bevvy of concerns raised by the public". The revised blueprint will also extend several "green corridors" from the main central park into the surrounding neighbourhoods of Kowloon City, Kowloon Bay and Ma Tau Kok.

The following features are proposed in the revised plan:

 * two cruise terminals, with a third terminal to be added if the need arises
 * a luxury hotel complex near the cruise terminals—the complex would sit about seven stories high, with hotel rooms atop commercial or tourist-related spaces
 * an eight-station monorail linking the tourist hub with Kwun Tong
 * a large stadium
 * a central park to provide green space
 * a 200 m high public viewing tower near the tip of the runway
 * a new bridge, likely to involve further reclamation of Victoria Harbour

The following are major changes:

 * hotel spaces are to be centralised near the end of the runway, and will face into the harbour towards Central
 * a third cruise terminal could be added at the foot of the hotel cluster if the need arises
 * a second row of luxury residential spaces is to be added facing Kwun Tong, built on an elevated terrace or platform to preserve a view of the harbour

The government has promised that:

 * the total amount of housing and hotel space will remain the same as proposed in June 2006
 * plot ratios will be the same as before
 * The total commercial space on the site will also remain about the same

The new bridge proposed by the government, joining the planned hotel district at the end of the runway with Kwun Tong, could be a potential source of controversy. Under the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance, no harbour reclamation can take place unless the Government can demonstrate to the courts an "overriding public need".

The new Kai Tak blueprint was presented to the Legislative Council on 24 October 2006 after review by the Town Planning Board.

2011 onwards
In 2011, with most of the former Kai Tak area still abandoned, ideas were floated to develop the area for commercial property, citing shortages of office space and rising property costs. In June 2013, the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal was opened on the tip of the former runway. Two public housing estates opened on the northeast area of the site in 2013, providing over 13,000 new rental flats. As of 2018, the public estates have been joined by some private residential developments, now nearing completion.

A small park and a new hospital (Hong Kong Children's Hospital) which began August 2013, have 2,400 rooms, 37 operating theatres, a neuroscience centre, an oncology centre specialist, outpatient clinics with a capacity of over 1.4 million annual attendances and a community health centre.

A new Mass Transit Railway (MTR) station, Kai Tak, opened on the former airport land on 14 February 2020 for phase one of the Tuen Ma line.

Construction of the Kai Tak Sports Park on the former airport land commenced in April 2019. Once completed, Kai Tak Sports Park will be the largest sports venue in Hong Kong and will include a 50,000 seat Main Stadium, an Indoor Sports Center, a Public Sports Ground and multiple open spaces.

Kai Tak Sky Garden, a massive elevated garden, opened in May 2021. It occupies part of the former runway and apron.

title: Kai Tak Airport


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Woodcreeper

The woodcreepers (Dendrocolaptinae) comprise a subfamily of suboscine passerine birds endemic to the Neotropics. They have traditionally been considered a distinct family Dendrocolaptidae, but most authorities now place them as a subfamily of the ovenbirds (Furnariidae). They superficially resemble the Old World treecreepers, but they are unrelated and the similarities are due to convergent evolution. The subfamily contains 63 species in 16 genera.

Woodcreepers range from 14 to 35 cm in length. Generally brownish birds, the true woodcreepers maintain an upright vertical posture, supported by their specialized stiff tails.

They feed mainly on insects taken from tree trunks. Some woodcreepers often form part of the core group at the centre of flocks attending army ant swarms. Woodcreepers are arboreal cavity-nesting birds; two or three white eggs are laid and incubated for about 15 to 21 days.

These birds can be difficult to identify in that they tend to have similar brown upperparts, and the more distinctive underparts are hard to see on a bird pressed against a trunk in deep forest shade. The bill shape, extend/shape of spots/streaks, and call are useful aids to determining species.

Description
The woodcreepers are generally fairly uniform in appearance. They range in size from the wedge-billed woodcreeper (13 cm) to the strong-billed woodcreeper (35 cm). Males tend to be slightly larger than females on average, but considerable overlap in size occurs in most species. Pronounced sexual dimorphism in size and plumage is rare. Bill size and shape accounts for much of the variation between the species. Bills can be straight or highly decurved, and can account for as much as a quarter of the length of the bird (as happens in the long-billed woodcreeper). The plumage is usually subdued and often brown, or sometimes rufous or other dark colours. Many species have patterns such as checking, spotting, or barring on their plumage. The feathers of the tail are rigid and are used for supporting the body when climbing tree trunks; the tail can support most of the body weight and birds that lose their tail find climbing difficult. Woodcreepers climb by flexing their legs and hopping up the trunk. The feet of the woodcreepers are also modified for climbing. The front toes are strongly clawed and toe IV is as long as toe III to increase the ability of the bird to grasp around branches. The legs are short but strong. Woodcreepers are also characterized by a belly feather growth pattern not found in any other birds.

Habitat and distribution
The woodcreepers are generally forest birds of Central and South America. Most species occur in rainforests, with the centre of diversity of the subfamily being the Amazon Basin. As many as 19 species of woodcreeper may co-occur in some areas of the Amazon, although in other rainforests, such as those in Costa Rica, the numbers are much lower. Other habitats used by the woodcreepers include pine-oak woodland, montane cloud forest, and pine forests. A few species, like the scimitar-billed woodcreeper, inhabit savannah or other partly open environments. Woodcreepers are absent from the temperate forests of southern South America.

Diet and feeding
The woodcreepers are insectivores that are mostly arboreal in nature. Insects form the majority of the diet, with some spiders, centipedes, millipedes and even lizards being taken as well. A few specimens collected by scientists had fruit or seeds in their stomachs, but plant material is not thought to be regularly taken by any species. A few species forage on the ground, but most forage on the trunks of trees, on and on the underside of branches. They are generally solitary or occur in pairs, but frequently join mixed-species feeding flocks. The flocks they join are usually the lower level ones rather than canopy flocks, and are usually those insectivorous ones rather than frugivorous ones. Prey is almost always obtained by moving up the trunk or branch, and there are two main foraging techniques, probing and sallying. Probers investigate rough bark, mosses, masses of trapped dead leaves, bromeliads, and other areas where prey may be hiding, whereas those that sally launch into the air briefly to snatch prey that has been flushed by their movement. Several species regularly attend swarms of army ants to catch prey flushed by the ants.

Systematics
The former family has been merged into the ovenbird family, Furnariidae, by most authorities because analyses of mt and nDNA sequence data showed Sclerurus leaftossers and Geositta miners to be basal to the Furnariidae and the woodcreepers. An alternative option was recommended by Moyle et al. (2009), in which the woodcreepers maintain their status as a family, while the ovenbirds (as traditionally defined) are split into two families: Scleruridae and Furnariidae.

The genus Xenops, which have usually been considered ovenbirds, represent an early divergence. Although some analyses suggested that they are more closely related to the woodcreepers than to true furnariids, other studies have not found the same results. Others suggested placing Xenops in its own family Xenopidae.

Evolutionary relationships among woodcreeper species are now fairly well known thanks to the use of DNA sequence data. Some previous results based on morphology were not supported by molecular data, mostly due to instances of convergent evolution in beak morphology. Plumage patterns, on the other hand, are more in agreement with the molecular data.

DNA studies revealed that Deconychura species belong into separate genera and that the Greater scythebill is not closely related to other scythebills in the genus Campylorhamphus but to Drymornis. Moving Lepidocolaptes fuscus to Xiphorhynchus restores monophyly of Lepidocolaptes.

Additionally, the species-level taxonomy of several groups requires further study. Examples of "species" where vocal and morphological variations suggests that more than one species-level taxon could be involved are the curve-billed scythebill and the white-chinned, olivaceous, strong-billed and straight-billed woodcreepers. The genus Xiphorhynchus also requires much more research in this regard. Hylexetastes may contain anything from one to four species.

A cladogram of the 16 woodcreeper genera based on the results of a 2020 molecular phylogenetic study of the suboscines by Michael Harvey and collaborators is shown below.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Woodcreeper


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Talk:Hong Kong International Airport

older comments
Changed 'dismantled' Kai Tak to 'retired' since the majority of the structure is there and functions as a bowling alley, car sales showroom and golf range. Fuzheado 07:01 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Skytrax survey
Can somebody please kindly add the following? I've tried to put it into the article but the administrators keep reverting.

==Awards== Skytrax - World best airport Source

Singapore Changi Airport has also got a list of awards.

 * I don't see the problem with this. It looks like appropriately referenced information from a plausibly legitimate survey with a surprisingly high number of respondents. I guess there is a bit of a bias to some of the world's newest airports, but that is fair enough - they probably do serve the regular travellers well.
 * The editors reverting are not listed as Administrators, just logged-in, named editors. Although vandalism and odd self-promotional edits often come from anonymous IP editors, a great many useful edits come from anonymous IPs too. (Even so, administrators don't have any special credence in editing most pages, they just have the ability to do some house-keeping tasks that aren't generally possible.) Does anyone care to explain the thinking behind the reverts? -- Solipsist 22:44, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks Solipsist. I don't know why it was reverted either.  But obviously my edit was not welcome by the one who reverted it.  Would anyone please kindly put it back into the article for me?  Thanks in advance. -- 11:30, December 10, 2004, UTC

 * Well lets wait a little for any alternative views. Two different editors reverting often means there is a good reason - I just don't see it. -- Solipsist 12:35, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I guess it would be better to put it back and see whether to keep or to remove. -- 14:12, December 10, 2004, UTC

I don't find the award relevant for the purposes of an encyclopedia. Even then, leaving it as its own section makes the section a perpetual stub. Seconds should ideally be at least two paragraphs long. --Jiang 22:37, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I would have thought an awards section is useful enough information, as long as it contains genuine high profile awards. As our anon says, Singapore Changi Airport which is a strong Pacific Rim competitor, has a fair sized awards section. On the other hand, Schiphol Airport, which frequently used to win business traveller awards, doesn't. But I agree, if we only have one award to mention, its hardly worth having an Awards section, unless this the standard style for airport articles. I figured Chek Lap Kok would also have won an architectural award (Foster often gets them, and there are usually enough to go round), but the best I could find was Ove Arup getting the 'The Structural Steel Design Awards' in 1999, and Foster & Partners getting the 'Architectural Ironmongery Specification Awards' in 2000/2001 — I'm not sure these are worth mentioning. So the real question is, what is the standing of the Skytrax award, or rather what is the highest profile traveller's award and has it ever been given to HK International? -- Solipsist 06:35, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * There are quite a lot of awards and recognitions. But I only meant to add a stub temporarily, and kept being reverted while I am working to expand it.  The Airport official website has got a page on the awards. Go check it, but it's a really long list :-P.

 * Chek Lap Kok (CLK) has the largest passenger terminal building, and is the most expensive airport construction project, according to Guiness World Records. It is also one of the top ten construction achievements of the 20th century Source.
 * CLK is also the airport handling the most international passengers and international cargo (domestic excluded). -- 10:47, December 11, UTC
 * Not so sure about the accuracy of this line. It is quite well known, that the busiest international airport in the world excluding domestic traffic is London Heathrow.--Huaiwei 14:45, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Thakns for pointing out a typo. It's handling the third most international passengers and the most international cargo, excluding domestic traffic. -- 19:50, December 11, 2004, UTC
 * Btw, the former HKIA at Kai Tak was also the third busiest and busiest.

Interesting that this is discussed, but anyway, I am divided on this issue. I agree that the text in the Singapore Changi Airport page pertaining to wards is a tad over-drawn, especially when it seems to add mentions for each award garnered during that period. However, I agree with some of you, that mentioning the kind and quantity of awards garnered by the airport can be a good resource worthy of an encyclopedia, so long that it is presented with a balance of being comperhensive, yet being salient. I would, for example, strongly consider editing the list for Changi, by merely listing the number of awards gathered by year, and only selectively picking out the most prominent awards for a small eleboration, or if it has been consistently awarded.

We should, at the same time be dilligent enough in providing quantifiable parametres to the data presented. A single line of "Skytrax - World best airport" is clearly insufficient, when it dosent even state the year the award was conferred! It is no wonder that the line was deleted, in my opinion.--Huaiwei 14:41, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Well it was reverted even when a hyperlink of the source was added. -- 19:49, December 11, 2004, UTC
 * That is hardly sufficient as far as wikipedia is concerned. It is not the link which is important. It is the contents writtern FOR wikipedia!--Huaiwei 06:45, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I was just trying to do the same as other airports. -- 03:14, December 13, 2004, UTC

OK, well the link to the airport's own awards list showing that it came first for four years running in Skytrax surveys persuades me that it is not nothing, although it is probably biased to airports which carry a large number of passengers (I suspect the survey is conducted by handing out leaflets at various airports and most people will just put down one of the two airports they are travelling between). Probably, the only other award worth mentioning is the World Travel Award in 2000. I'll put these into a paragraph in the article. -- Solipsist 08:24, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Just a moment. That commentary that the airport is the busiest international cargo airport....is there a source to validate it first? It might be a good idea to indicate the year for these stats.--Huaiwei 09:01, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Search by Google - "busiest international cargo airport" -- 17:26, December 12, 2004, UTC
 * Changed the text to reflect that HKIA is the busiet cargo airport annually since it opened in 1998. Now can anyone else give some quantified data in terms of years for the international passengers rankings?--Huaiwei 02:37, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A section on awards?
Shall we add a section on awards, like Singapore Changi Airport? :-) — Instantnood 13:02, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Adding overview picture
I think that we should adding overview picture for this airport, and other majority airport so that viewer can tell how big are them

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title: Talk:Hong Kong International Airport


text:
Loviisa

Loviisa (Lovisa ; formerly Degerby ) is a town in Finland, located in the southern coast of the country. Loviisa is situated in the eastern part of the Uusimaa region. The population of Loviisa is approximately 0, while the sub-region has a population of approximately 0. It is the most populous municipality in Finland.

Loviisa is located 90 km from Helsinki and 38 km from Porvoo. The municipality covers an area of undefined km2 of which undefined km2 is water. The population density is undefined PD/km2.

The neighboring municipalities of Liljendal, Pernå and Ruotsinpyhtää were consolidated with Loviisa on 1 January 2010.

Loviisa is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages. The population consists of NaN Finnish speakers, NaN Swedish speakers, and NaN speakers of other languages.

Loviisa was founded in 1745, as a border fortress against Russia. Most of the fortifications have been preserved. Loviisa was originally called Degerby, but king Adolf Frederick of Sweden renamed the city after his spouse Lovisa Ulrika after visiting the town in 1752.

Loviisa is the site of two of Finland's nuclear reactors, two VVER units each of 488 MWe, at the Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant. The other operating reactors are at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant.

18th century
The town of Degerby was founded on the grounds of the Degerby horse stable in Pernå in 1745 as a frontier and fortress town. Eastern Finland needed a new staple town because the eastern border had shifted in the 1743 Treaty of Åbo. The only staple town in eastern Finland, Hamina, was left beyond the border. King Adolf Frederick of Sweden visited Degerby in 1752 and renamed the town as Loviisa after his wife, Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. The first mayor of Loviisa from 1747 to 1765 was Jacob af Forselles, who had fled from Hamina and bought the Petjärvi (Strömfors) ironworks together with Anders Nohrström.

In 1748 construction of the Loviisa fortress started, but it soon ground to a halt because of financial difficulties in the kingdom of Sweden. Only part of the outer battlements were constructed. The bastions Rosen and Ungern to the east of the current city centre serve as reminders of the history of the fortress town. The Svartholm fortress to the south of the town was built at the same time as the Loviisa fortress. This marine fortress was meant to protect the town from the seaside and provide a safe harbour for the coastal fleet of Sweden. The Swedish era in Svartholm ended in 1808 when the fortress surrendered to the Russians almost without resistance.

19th century
The year 1855 during the Crimean War was a dramatic time in Loviisa. Late in the evening on 5 July a fire broke out in the town, which destroyed a large part of the old town blocks in the centre. As well as about 70 residential buildings, the wooden church of Loviisa was also destroyed in the fire. During the previous day, the English fleet had started firing at Svartholm, and on the day of the fire the fortress had exploded into ruins. The gunfire from the English warship was not actually connected to the fire in the town, and the actual cause of the fire remains a mystery. The events of summer 1855 are depicted in Runar Schildt's 1916 novel Sateenkaari (Regnbågen), with certain artistic liberties.

After the fire there was a proposal to move the town to the south, but the Imperial Senate decided in April 1856 to rebuild Loviisa at its original site. The reconstruction was done according to Ernst Lohrmann's zoning plan, which was largely based on Georg Theodor Chiewitz's proposal made before the fire. At the same time, in the early 1860s, Loviisa started to consciously develop into a spa town. The main building of the waterworks was built in 1865 at the site of the current Kappelinpuisto park. A restaurant was founded in the same greenspace, and the local "health springs" were put back into use.

In the 1880s Georg Öhman, the senior doctor at the spa, recommended Myllyharju as a suitable walking site for spa guests. A viewing pavilion was built in the early 1890s at the hill (at the site where the last windmill was transferred to in the 1920s). At the end of the decade the Mossebacken pension and the summer restaurant Casino, both designed by Lars Sonck, were built near Kukkukivi. The wooden pavilion at Kukkukivi was replaced with the current cast iron tower in 1906. Loviisa remained a popular spa town up to World War I. The spa activity had a significant effect on the economy of the town, and the town also developed a rich cultural life particularly in terms of music.

Up to the 1880s the most important sources of income in Loviisa were trade and handicraft. What little there was of industry was concentrated on seafaring (boat crafting) and stimulants. Loviisa had had a tobacco factory already since the 1750s, and in the late 1770s a state alcohol distillery was started in Loviisa (king Gustav III had forbidden home distillation). In 1858 count Carl Magnus Creutz formed a beer brewery in Loviisa. According to historian Olle Sirén, Creutz's entry into the business was based on his need to secure the sales of barley at the Malmgård manor. In 1874 the brewery was transferred to the Bavarian Heinrich Lehmann, and his family continued to brew beer for almost a century.

Industrialisation began in earnest in 1882 when the merchant Arseni Terichoff built a steam-operated sawmill at the current site of Sahaniemi. In the 1890s the sawmill had about fifty employees, and over a hundred in the early 1900s. A cardboard factory started in 1912 and soon became the second largest employer in the city. At the turn of the century a railway connection from Loviisa to Vesijärvi in Lahti was completed, and the cardboard factory was the first significant industrial company founded in Loviisa to make use of the railroad. The sea lane underneath the bridge was not deep enough for steamships, so harbour activity was moved first to Tullisilta and then to Valko upon the completion of the railroad.

1900 to 1950
World War I affected Loviisa as unemployment and rising food prices. The activity of the sawmill ended in 1914, and the activity at the harbours decreased. In 1917 the Loviisa workers' association made demands about the seating of the important food committee. Despite amends made by the city council a political strike started in August. Socialist workers demanded properly paid jobs for all citizens of Loviisa as well as at least half of the seats in the food committee. In its meeting on 18 August the city council only agreed to the first demand. On the same day the workers declared a "state of full strike", cut of telecommunications and occupied the railway station. The city council held a meeting in the evening, deciding to form a guard.

On 19 August 150 citizens of Loviisa signed up for the guard, received white arm ribbons and marched onto the city square. The strikers retreated to Uusikaupunki. The socialists tried in vain to seek Russian military help from Helsinki, and during the same evening there was an attempt at the Workers' House to declare the strike as finished. But inspired by the Russian Revolution, a new strike began in Loviisa on 15 November, and only three days later the socialists called Russian soldiers for help. In addition to them, Red Guard members from Kotka arrived in Valko, and on 19 November 200 to 300 armed men marched from Valko to Loviisa. The police station, the telephone centre and the railway station were occupied. The red flag was hoisted at city hall, and 20 to 30 executive members of the city council were taken to Uusikaupunki as prisoners. A compromise about the police station was reached at the end of the year, and the situation calmed down.

Loviisa was among those places in Finland that the battles of the year 1918 affected closely. At the start the whites fought a freedom war against Russia: there were violent Russian troops in the vicinity of the city. But there was a civil war going on in Loviisa right from the start: part of the population supported a socialist revolution. Agitation played a part, but according to Sirén, in Loviisa lack of food and unemployment played the most important role. Preparation for the civil war included Jaeger training in Germany, and the first Finn to travel there was Georg Öhman, referred to as "Jäger Eins", the son of a doctor in Loviisa. Other Jaegers included Ragnar Nordström, the son of a customs officer. The guards at the Loviisa region were organised at New Year and at the end of January the guards numbered almost 200 people. Their armament left much to desire.

At the start of February the Red Guard in Loviisa numbered almost a hundred men. They had received weapons from the Red Guard in Kotka and from Russian soldiers. The civil war broke out on 27 January, and a bit more than a week after that the whites controlled the eastern part of the Uusimaa region from Sipoo to Loviisa. From the whites' viewpoint it was important that the Uusimaa guards could hold their positions. They were far away from the main frontlione but could hold off against red troops. On 6 February the reds attacked Loviisa from Kotka. The attackers numbered almost 550, of which about 50 were Red Guard members from the Loviisa area. After receiving news of the advance of the reds the whites in Loviisa moved about three kilometres east from the centre. There was an armed battle, after which the whites - threatened by a blockade - retreated to the Rosen and Ungern fortresses. There was another battle in the evening, where the whites lost ten men (there are no records of the reds' losses). The whites ran nearly out of ammunition and thus they retreated to the west. The reds moved to Pyhtää.

On the next day on 7 February the reds marched to Loviisa, hoisted a red flag at the city hall and founded their headquarters at the City Club. The reds engaged in violence resulting in more deaths of the whites than in the armed battles on 6 February. The revolutionary court of the reds issued over 70 sentences to members of the guard and to other "counter-revolutionaries". Many of the accused were sentenced to civil service and/or fines, so the reds would benefit financially. At the start of April, Mannerheim's troops occupied Tampere, and the German Detachment Brandenstein numbering 3000 men landed in Valko, advancing to Uusikylä and Lahti. The detachment left Loviisa on 16 December 1918 after Germany had lost World War I.

The spa reopened in 1919. The Russians had gone way after the October Revolution in 1917, but the spa still had 250 to 400 annual visitors in the early 1920s. In 1926 a fashionable beach life became accessible by transporting large amounts of sand to the Plagen beach. However, visitor numbers decreased in the late 1920s. An announcement about discontinuing the spa was made in 1929 when the city decided to continue operations in the spa. Loviisa failed to restore its reputation at the turn of the century, the spa had become badly deteriorated and there was intense competition from Hanko. In 1931 visitor numbers dropped below a hundred, and finally the city council decided in January 1935 not to open the spa any more. The women working at the spa protested and received permission to continue work under their own responsibility. The spa season in 1935 was a huge success, but in January 1936 the main building of the spa was completely destroyed in a fire. The spa was not rebuilt.

The land fronts in the Winter War and the Continuation War were a safe distance away from Loviisa. Nevertheless there was fear of an enemy landing, and the archipelago had guard stations and cannons. After the end of the Winter War there was a Danish battalion of 600 volunteer men on the archipelago for a few months. There were about 800 air strike alarms from 1939 to 1944, but the bombers mostly targeted Helsinki, Lahti or Kotka. During the Winter War Loviisa was bombed twice, and two citizens died. The bombings in the Continuation War were concentrated on the summers of 1941 and 1944, there were also two casualties. There is no record of the total number of Loviisa citizens killed during the wars. The new cemetery has 92 war hero graves, but not all of them were registered in Loviisa. In spring 1941 the Finnish Brother-in-Arms Association started to produce a Military Village project to the southwestern side of Myllyharju together with Ragnar Nordström. About 20 residential buildings were built at the Military Village, of which Nordström financed the most. The 200th anniversary of Loviisa was celebrated in 1945 with President of Finland Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim attending.

Nordström had already started a successful business career in the 1920s. In 1922 he founded a corporation named Lovisa Stevedoring, and during the next years he bought the majority of Lovisa Ångfartyg A.B. The company acquired its first steamship meant for international traffic in 1927. Around 1930 Nordström's shipping and cargo businesses started to form an entire concern. In spring 1931 he founded the company Loviisan Kalastus Oy and equipped his ships to catch herring at the Icelandic waters. In August the first shipment of herring reached Valko. Except for the war years, the catch of herring on Nordström's ships continued for over twenty years. The Nordström concern was at its largest in the 1950s when it employed 1700 people, of which over 700 lived in Loviisa.

From 1950 onwards
The land surface area of Loviisa grew to over two times its size from 1920 to 1970. Antinkylä had already practically changed from a rural village to a city district when it was annexed to Loviisa in 1924. On the other hand, the annexation of Valko, which had also belonged to Pernå, to Loviisa caused much controversy. The city of Loviisa had bought large areas of land from the Valko area already in the early 20th century, and the annexation had been under plans for half a century until it was finally decided in 1956. In the same year it was confirmed that the state would take care of the railway between Valko and Lahti and widen its tracks (the railway has only served cargo traffic since 1981). The island of Hästholmen which had belonged to Ruotsinpyhtää was annexed to Loviisa in 1969 because of the upcomin nuclear power plant. The city of Loviisa had owned the lands of the island and its surrounding, and sold them to the nuclear power company Imatran Voima a few years earlier.

The two largest companies in Loviisa - the Nordström concern and Rauma-Repola - were under great difficulties in the middle 1960s, so building a nuclear power plant in the city was seen as important. In 1965 the city council received news of Imatran Voima's plans to build a nuclear power plant on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, and the mayor Gunnar Wahlström started proposing Loviisa as the site of the plant. Because of political reasons, the decision to build the plant was delayed, and construction only started in 1970. The machinery installations in autumn 1975 raised employment in Loviisa to its top figure at 3900 people. In March 1977 President of Finland Urho Kekkonen and Premier of the Soviet Union Alexei Kosygin inaugurated the first nuclear power plant unit. The deal of building another similar unit in Loviisa had been signed in August 1971. The unit was completed in 1980. The power plants had utilised large amounts of western technology right from the start, and their usage levels have reached international top rankings.

From 1983 to 1985 a state granary was built in the Valko harbour, containing sixteen silos slightly over 80 metres tall. The bypass to the north of the city centre could be taken into use in 1989. The extension of the highway between Porvoo and Koskenkylä to Loviisa had been completed five years earlier. In 1999 the part of the highway between Porvoo and Koskenkylä had been changed to a motorway. In the early 2010s the motorway was extended from Koskenkylä to Kotka and Hamina (the current motorway reaches up to the Vaalimaa border station against Russia). In 1995 the city of Loviisa celebrated its 250th anniversary and professor Sirén's history of the city was published in Finnish and Swedish.

Pernå, Liljendal and Ruotsinpyhtää were annexed to Loviisa on 1 January 2010. The annexation was done according to the municipalities' own proposals, Lapinärvi had decided not to undergo annexation. At the same time, the area of Haavisto-Vastila which had belonged to Ruotsinpyhtää was annexed to the municipality of Pyhtää. The annexation was led by Loviisa mayor Olavi Kaleva. The new municipality received an annexation grant of about 6.2 million euro from the state. Kaleva resigned from his post in spring 2017. The reason for his resignation was disagreement with the city council. In December 2017 Kaleva was succeeded by Jan D. Oker-Blom for a fixed term of seven years. In October 2018 the board of the Suomen Asuntomessut cooperative decided to award the 2023 event to Loviisa.

Geography
Loviisa is located 77 kilometres to the east of Helsinki (as the crow flies). The closest neighbouring municipalities are Porvoo to the west and Kotka to the east. Of the surface area of the municipality of Loviisa, 819.81 square kilometres are land, 25.83 square kilometres are inland waters and 905.88 square kilometres are sea. The land area of Loviisa is larger than that of Porvoo or Kotka, and even larger than those of Helsinki, Vantaa and Espoo put together. There are about forty lakes in the municipality, of which the largest is Hopjärvi (Tammijärvi is even larger but only a small part of it is located in Loviisa). Other large lakes include Lappominjärvi, Sarvalaxträsket, Särkjärvi and Teutjärvi. The rivers of Koskenkylänjoki, Loviisanjoki and Taasianjoki, as well as the western branches of the Kymi river run through Loviisa.

Central conurbation
The Finnish Museum Board has declared the Esplanadi area in Loviisa around the market square as a nationally significant cultural area. Esplanadi has also been chosen as the cultural landscape of the year in the Western Kymi cultural road in 2019. The principal buildings in the area include the pink city hall (Georg Theodor Chiewitz 1862), the Neo-Gothic Loviisa church (Georg Theodor Chiewitz and Julius Basilier 1865) and Finland's oldest surviving wooden social club (Georg Theodor Chiewitz 1863 and Selim A. Lindqvist 1907). Historical districts in the central conurbation include the city centre and the districts of Alakaupunki, Garnisoni and Uusikaupunki. Alakaupunki was spared in the 1855 fire, and it contains the auxiliary building of the Degerby horse stead dating from the 1690s. It is one of Finland's oldest wooden buildings. Uusikaupunki was built as a workers' district to the west of the railway station in the early 20th century.

Other districts include Uusi teollisuusalue, Vanha teollisuusalue, Pohjoistulli, Panimonmäki, Hakalehto, Ulrika, Määrlahti, Rauhala, Eteläharju, Antinkylä, Bella, Haravankylä, Köpbacka and Valko. Valko is both a residential district and a harbour and industrial district. The districts of Määrlahti, Rauhala, Eteläharju and Valko contain suburban apartment building areas.

The western entrance area to the centre of Loviisa along the Finnish National Road 7 started to be called Kuningattarenportti ("Queen's gate") in the early 2010s, and developed into an area of shops and business buildings. At the same time, a new large residential area was planned to the Harmaakallio area to the west of the central conurbation, but only a small part of it has been completed. A new residential area named Kuningattarenranta is being built on the eastern shore of the Loviisanlahti bay, which will host the 2023 event of the Asuntomessut fair.

Conurbations
According to the definition given by the Finnish Statistics Centre, Loviisa has seven conurbations in addition to the central conurbation. Of these three are parishes: Liljendal, Pernå and Ruotsinpyhtää. The St. Michael's church built in Pernå in the 15th century is the oldest building in Loviisa. Two of the conurbations - Koskenkylä and the Ruotsinpyhtää parish - have been built around ironworks areas. The Koskenkylä ironworks area is mainly closed to visitors, whereas Strömfors in Ruotsinpyhtää is open for tourism. Other than the central conurbation, the largest conurbations in the municipality are Koskenkylä and Tesjoki, both with about a thousand inhabitants. In late 2019 Loviisa had 14,772 inhabitants, of which 10,904 lived in conurbations, 3,728 in dispersed settlements and 140 at unknown locations. Of the population of Loviisa, 74.5% lived in conurbations.

Countryside and archipelago
There are numerous manors in Loviisa, of which the most are located in the western part of the municipality. The manor concentration of Sjögård, Tervik and Tjusterby in Pernåviken dating from the Middle Ages forms a nationally significant cultural area. Other historically significant manors include the Suur-Sarvilahti manor near the central conurbation, the Malmgård manor in the northwestern part of the municipality and the Kulla manor in the east. The manors are in private ownership, only a few of them (Malmgård, Labby, Suur-Sarvilahti and Kulla) are even partly open to the public.

Of the tens of villages in Loviisa the Pernå parish, Fasarby, Horslök and Härkäpää are historically significant. Fasarby is a group village dating from the Middle Ages consisting of old business houses for soldiers. The village is located in the southwestern part of the municipality at the bottom of the Fasarbyviken bay, and its current buildings consist of paired houses built in the 18th and 19th centuries and mansard roof villas built in the 1920s. The archipelago villages of Horslök and Härkäpää (Swedish: Härpe) are located in Sarvisalo. Both villages date from the Middle Ages, and they have exceptionally well preserved their appearance from the early 20th century. There is a windmill built in the 19th century in Härkäpää.

The island of Sarvisalo has a surface area of 27.4 square kilometres and is the largest island in Loviisa, with a permanent connection to the mainland. Other large islands include Gäddbergsö, Kampuslandet and Keipsalo. The island of Hästholmen is known for the Loviisa nuclear power plant, and the Svartholm fortress is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Loviisa. After the Crimean War the fortress was left to decay, but it has been restored led by the Finnish Museum Board since the 1960s. There is a pilot station in Orrengrund and a lightouse in Tiiskeri (Swedish: Digskär). There has previously been pilot activity in Boistö and the neighbouring island of Lehtinen (Swedish: Lövö), but they now host accommodation services and meeting facilities. Boistö hosted secret negotiations between Russia and the United States about the situation in Ukraine in summer 2014.

Distances
Distances from the city centre of Loviisa to other localities along the shortest routes with their approximated driving times:

Sights
The building of the sea fortress of Svartholm, located to the south from the city, was begun at the same time as the fortification of Loviisa. The purpose of the sea fortress was to protect the city from the sea, as well as to offer safe haven for the Swedish coastal navy. A joint Anglo-French navy unit destroyed the battlements of the island during the naval warfare in the Gulf of Finland. No longer fit for use the fortress was left to decay. As of the 1960s the fortress has been restored led by the Finnish Heritage Agency. The restoration was brought to a conclusion in time for the 250th jubilee of the fortress in 1998.

During the summers various programmes are arranged on the island of Svartholm for both locals and tourists. The guided tours, an exciting adventure for juniors and a restaurant lure both boaters and people travelling by the ferry boat, which does regular traffic between Loviisa centre and Svartholm.

Loviisa is also renowned for its Old Town. The Old Town was spared from the great fire of 1855. An annex of the Degerby estate, dating from the 17th century, is located in the Old Town. The building is one of the oldest surviving wooden houses in Finland. In Loviisa there is also a high society clubhouse, the only one of its kind in Finland spared from fires. Having been restored it now is a library/mediatheque. The first church in Loviisa was destroyed during the fire. The current Neo-Gothic church was inaugurated in 1865.

The German Brandenstein division landed in Valko in Loviisa on 7 April 1918. The division advanced as far as to Lahti, before returning to Loviisa in order to leave the country on 16 December 1918, as Germany had lost World War I.

The summers are lively in Loviisa. The most popular summer events are the Historical Houses of Loviisa (an event for traditional house building and renovating), the Sibelius Days, the Loviisa Day on 25 August and the King Arrives in Loviisa (a weekend in the spirit of the 18th century), Small Ships' Race (festival for traditional small sailing ships), the Peace Forum and the horse trotting contests.

Economy
Loviisa has many companies related to the local tourism. The port in Valko and the Loviisa Power Plant bring industry to Loviisa. There is also an industrial park in the Uusikaupunki district, housing many smaller companies, for instance mechanical shops and retail sellers of spare parts.

There is a harbour for cargoes such as timber, bulk and parcelled goods in the southern city district of Valko. From the harbour there is a traffic connection to Route 7, the major highway between Helsinki and St Petersburg. Loviisa centre is located immediately by Route 7, equally close to Helsinki and the Russian border. There is also a train connection from the harbour to Lahti, from where the carriages can reach other destinations in the country. The route into the harbour is 9.5 meters deep.

The city of Loviisa is the largest employer in the municipality. It has over a thousand employees and an annual budget of about 130 million euro. The income tax percentage in Loviisa is 20.25%. In 2019 the city received 59 million euro in tax income and 25 million euro in state subsidies. The largest expenses were personnel costs (49 million) and service purchases (47 million). In 2020 the loans of the municipality concern amounted to 7158 euro per citizen, which was smaller than the average in Uusimaa. The 2021 financial statement of the city of Loviisa had a surplus of 4.6 million euro. The city owns significant minority shares of Loviisan Satama Oy and Kymenlaakson Sähkö Oy. In 2019 the rate of self-sufficiency in the jobs in Loviisa was 82.0%. According to the Statistics Centre, 5.4% of the jobs were in primary production, 32.7% in refinery and 59.4% in services. The employment rate was 73.8%, the highest since 1989. In November 2021 11.4% of the population in Loviisa were unemployed when the average rate in Uusimaa was 10.0%.

The largest individual employer in Loviisa is Fortum Power and Heat Oy and its nuclear power plant on the island of Hästholmen, 15 kilometres south from the centre. Fortum employs over 500 people in Loviisa. The central conurbation hosts a factory building Loval electroni components. It employs about 300 people making Loval the third largest employer in the city. There are industrial areas all over the municipality. The areas of Uusi teollisuusalue and Vanha teollisuusalue are located near the centre, including small businesses such as repair shops and spare parts shops. The area of Valko includes harbour activity and other industry, including the Timberpoint wood element factory and the boat outfitter Boomerang Boats. The Liljendal industrial area includes several successful businesses such as the healthcare product manufacturer Teampac, the packaging company Liljendalin Tehdas, the screw spool manufacture Topcore and the hydraulics company Mecanil. Companies in the Tesjoki industrial area include Kuusisen Kala (Disa's Fish), Eltete (wood and paper refinery) and Nalco Finland Manufacturing producing special chemicals. There is also a small industrial area in Koskenkylä.

Schools and education
There are 13 primary schools in Loviisa, of which six are Finnish-speaking and seven are Swedish-speaking. Ten of the schools are located in village centres all around Loviisa. There are two gymnasiums, the Finnish-speaking Loviisan lukio and the Swedish-speaking Lovisa Gymnasium. There is a bilingual folk high school in Loviisa, holding classes both in the centre and in the villages, also active in the areas of Lapinjärvi and Pyhtää.

In the 2010s and early 2020s the city of Loviisa invested in new school buildings. A new building for the junior stage primary school was built in 2014. Because of indoor air problems the building was intermittently out of use from 2018 to 2019. The old part of the Harjurinne school and Loviisan lukio built in the 1950 has been renovated and there are new exercise opportunities for the students, such as ball game fields.

Most of the school buildings are made of wood. Koskenkylä received a new bilingual central school when a new log school building was built next to the Forsby skolan building. The old school building is also made of logs and was renovated at the same time. The central school was completed in autumn 2020.

The construction of the new Swedish-speaking senior stage primary school in the centre of Loviisa - Lovisavikens skola - used slightly more modern wood materials, cross-laminated timber elements and laminated beam bars. The two-story school building was completed in late 2020, and the Lovisa Gymnasium next to it was renovated at the same time. The house technics in the Art Nouveau building from the early 20th century were renovated (including the air conditioning) and an elevator shaft was built outside the additional wing built in the 1950s.

Congregations
After the 2019 renovation, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland in Loviisa has split into two congregations, the Finnish and Swedish Agricola congregations, which are also active in Lapinjärvi. The two congregations form the congregation association in the Loviisa area. In 2023, 68.2% of the citizens of Loviisa belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

After the 2010 annexation there were five Evangelical Lutheran congregations in Loviisa: the Liljendal congregation, the Finnish congregation in Loviisa, the Pernå congregation, the Ruotsinpyhtää congregation and the Swedish congregation in Loviisa.

The congregation of south-eastern Finland of the Orthodox Church of Finland is also active in the Loviisa area. The city also has an independent Pentecostal congregation.

Accommodation
Loviisa offers diverse accommodation services. There are two hotels in the city centre, and a couple of slightly more modest inns in the centre or near it. There are individual cabins and villas available for rent all over the municipality. Near the Rönnäs golf course, on the western shore of the Pernåviken bay, are cabin villages with tens of cabins.

Camping area
Loviisa Camping is located in Tamminiemi on the shore of the Loviisanlahti bay. The camping area is operated by the city of Loviisa. The camping area is two kilometres away from the city centre, but only a bit more than a kilometre away from Laivasilta, the centre of summer life in Loviisa. The Plagen beach and the tennis and padel fields in Casinopuisto are located right next to the camping area. The camping area has an old French formal garden and two well preserved Empire style wooden buildings from the 19th century. The light blue building hosts the reception, a café and maintenance facilities, and the yellow building - Willa Björksten - has seven accommodation rooms with three more in the courtyard building. There are about 50 places for recreational vehicles and caravans and about 20 places for tents. The area is open from spring to autumn.

Visitor boat harbours
There are several official small boat harbours with visitor spaces for visiting boaters. The Laivasilta harbour with 60 visitor boat spaces is located near the city centre. It is a so-called "Roope harbour" meaning it fulfils the environmental requirements of the Pidä Saaristo Siistinä ("Keep the Archipelago Clean") union. The Tullisilta pier is located less than a kilometre south from Laivasilta, meant for slightly bigger boats. The Svartholm fortress island has about 65 free-of-charge visitor boat spaces. There are also visitor boat piers in Kabböle, Backstensstrand and Rönnäs.

Events
Summer is an active time in Loviisa. Recurring events include Loviisan Wanhat Talot, the Small Ships' Race boat festival, Midsummer parties in Laivasilta and Svartholm, Avoimet puutarhat, Loviisan Rauhanfoorumi, the reader festival of the Nya Östis newspaper, the Loviisa Week, the "Kuningas saapuu Loviisaan" ("The King arrives in Loviisa") weekend and toto races. Events outside the central conurbation include the Old time days (in the Jokela home museum), the Liljendal days, Ruotsinpyhtää Bluegrass and Ruukki Picnic (veteran cars).

In early autumn, the Sibelius days are celebrated all over the city, and the Night of the ancient fires is celebrated in Laivasilta. There has been a Kekri event in the Strömfors ironworks between October and November, which has attracted many visitors. In the winter citizens of Loviisa open their homes to the public in the Wanhan Ajan Joulukodit ("Christmas Homes of Old Times") event, and there are Christmas markets on the market square, in Laivasilta, in the Strömfors ironworks and at the Malmgård manor. The New Year is celebrated with cabaret performances at the local film theatre. There is a Brandenstein march in April, followed by Vappu celebrations at the market square and in Laivasilta, and the opening of the summer season at the Strömfors ironworks later in May.

Asuntomessut 2023
The 2023 event of the national Asuntomessut fair was held in Kuningattarenranta in Loviisa from 7 July to 6 August 2023. The residential area of Kuningattarenranta is completely new and located between Loviisanlahti and Saaristotie, only a kilometre away from the city centre. Many lots have their own beaches and nearly all have a view to the sea. The area was mostly populated with small houses, and also with a couple of apartment buildings, of which at least one is made of wood. Floating detached houses and a glass-walled greenhouse have already attracted great interest.

Sport clubs
The football club FC Loviisa was born when the clubs Loviisan Tor and Loviisan Riento joined their football teams. Riento continued as a boxing and wrestling club, whereas Loviisan Tor now concentrates on floorball, cross-country skiing, badminton and athletics. FC Loviisa also has futsal teams, and Loviisan Tenniskerho and Hokki Basket allow for tennis and basketball respectively. The city has an ice hockey club and a figure skating club, and its judo and taekwondo clubs allow for martial arts. The Swedish-speaking gymnastics club Lovisa Gymnastikförening was founded in 1897. Some smaller conurbations have local clubs concentrating on cross-country skiing, athletics and frisbee golf. Loviisa also has an active shooting club.

Exercise places
The Loviisa exercise hall is located near the city centre, next to the Loviisanlahti bay. The hall is used by the floorball teams of Loviisan Tor and the futsal teams of FC Loviisa. The Agricola hall in Koskenkylä is of similar size, whereas the exercise halls in Liljendal and Valko are much smaller. There are a couple of private gyms in the city centre and halls operated by the municipality in other conurbations.

There is a private padel hall in Uusi teollisuusalue in Loviisa, and there is a bowling alley operated by Loviisan Keilailuliitto in the Rauhala district. Rauhala also hosts a lightly-built ice rink and an astroturf field operated by FC Loviisa right next to it. There is a slightly smaller astroturf field near the Finnish-speaking school centre.

The Keskusurheilukenttä sports field is located near the city centre with a training field next to it. There are also sports fields in Liljendal, Ruukki, Isnäs, the Pernå parish and Valko. There are three tennis fields, operated by Loviisan Tenniskerho, in the Casinopuisto park in the city centre opposite the Plagen beach. There is also a new padel field in the park and there are two volleyball fields on the beach. Other beaches include the southern beach of Särkjärvi and Taikaranta in Liljendal. There is an 18-hole golf course in Rönnäs on the western shore of the Pernåviken bay. There are ice hockey and skating rinks as well as smaller ball game fields all over the municipality.

Race track
The Loviisa race track is located only 700 metres from the Loviisa market square. The track was built in 1950s and is operated by Itä-Uudenmaan Oriyhdistys ry, founded in 1926. The race track holds five toto races every summer and also serves as a coaching track all year round. In 2018 the track was awarded as the summer race track of the year.

Hiking routes
There are two historical and close to the nature walking routes in the city centre: Ehrensvärdinpolku and the Myllyharju walking route. Both routes are about two kilometres long. The Urheilupaviljonki, Harmaakallio, Tesjoki and Valko exercise paths are located slightly further away from the centre, serving as ski tracks in winter. There is a short hiking trail in Liljendal, and there are ski tracks in the Pernå parish, Koskenkylä, Andersby, the Ruotsinpyhtää parish and Ruotsinkylä.

The Kukuljärvi hiking route is located near the Strömfors ironworks, starting from the Ruukki sports centre, with a large free-of-charge parking site. The route is about eight kilometres long, but an additional hike of two kilometres is needed to see the Branni cave. There are barbecue grills on the shore of lake Kukuljärvi and river Kymi. Because of the difficult terrain, the route is not accessible for people with limited mobility. The Kallen kierros hiking route, 11.5 kilometres long, is located in Liljendal and goes along much smoother terrain.

Museums
The city museum of Loviisa was founded in 1904, and since the 1960s its main premises have been in the Komendantintalo house built in 1755. It has a basic exhibition and alternating theme exhibitions. The smithy museum of the Strömfors ironworks and the Viirilä homestead museum are part of the city museum of Loviisa. The smithy museum offers exhibits of the old ironworks and the way the smiths worked, whereas the Viirilä homestead museum offers exhibits of peasant and handicraft culture of previous centuries.

There are also several private museums in Loviisa, of which the Maritime Museum is located the nearest to the city centre. It is located on the city's old harbour area in Laivasilta and is operated by the Loviisa Maritime History Foundation. The museum holds diverse exhibits of the city's maritime history, including models of ships, paintings, the parlor of an old steamship and other maritime things. The century-old harbour tugboat Onni also belongs to the foundation.

The Jokela homestead museum is located in Ruotsinkylä in the northeastern part of the municipality, specialising in farming and forestry history. It is open on Sundays in July, and by appointment at other times. The Archipelago Museum in Rönnäs and the Isnäs steam engine museum are located on the western shore of the Pernåviken bay. The Agricola museum is located in Koskenkylä and the "Finland's smallest shop museum" is located in Skinnarby, exhibiting items from the 1950s and 1960s.

Libraries
The main library of the city of Loviisa was located in the historically significant Club room building since 1998. Because of indoor air problems the library moved out of the premises in 2018 and into new premises in Alakaupunki. There are local libraries in Tesjoki, Liljendal and the Pernå parish. There is also a library bus going around the city. The Loviisa library is part of the Helle library network common to many municipalities in Uusimaa.

Visual art
All of the art galleries in Loviisa that are open all year round are located in the city centre. Galleria Theodor is an exhibition space operated by the association Loviisan taideyhdistys ry. The renovated Almintalo house hosts both exhibitions and various cultural events. The colourful home gallery of professor and artist Riitta Nelimarkka is located in the Bonga castle. Galleri Emilie hosts art by Kristina Elo and also works as a frame building workshop.

In summertime there are exhibitions at Laivasilta, at Galleria Saltbodan and in the granary of Klassiset Veneet ry. There are also summer exhibitions in the galleries of the Strömfors ironworks on Tallinmäki. The Zabludowicz Collection hosted in Sarvisalo is very rarely open to the public.

There is also an active photography club in the city - Loviisan Kameraseura - with its own convention space and studio in the Meijeri building on Chiewitzinkatu. Photographs by club members are constantly shown at the Safcafe in Kuningattarenportti, and the club also publishes a free-of-charge magazine called Loisto. Both the photography club and the art association hold courses, and visual art can also be studied at the Loviisa art school.

Music and dance
The music academy of the Porvoo region also offers education in Loviisa. The academy has its own premises in the Sibeliustalo building near the church. The education is directed to both children and youth as well as adults, and the academy cooperates with local schools and kindergartens. There are numerous Finnish and Swedish speaking choirs in Loviisa, and the music academy has a bilingual children's choir. The city orchestra of Loviisa was founded in 1888, and now works as a hobby-based wind instrument orchestra.

The Loviisa dance academy is an advocacy association founded in 2007. It offers a hobby possibility for all ages, and teaches children's dance, modern dance and classic ballet. The main premises of the dance academy are located in the city centre.

Theatre
Loviisa does not have a city theatre, the nearest one is located in Kotka. However there are several summer and hobbyist theatres in Loviisa. The Loviisa theatre is a hobbyist theatre founded in 1978. It has no permanent premises or scene, but instead holds performances all over the municipality. The Ruukinmylly summer theatre, calling itself a professional theatre, is active at the Strömfors ironworks. It has a roofed stand with 240 seats.

The Swedish-speaking Lurens sommarteater is active in the village of Hardom, and is particularly known for its rotating stand. The theatre is a hobbyist theatre but its directors are professionals. In Liljendal local theatre hobbyists perform an annual revue in the local Swedish dialect. Both the Loviisa theatre and the Loviisa art academy hold theatre courses in the city.

Healthcare
There is a municipal health centre near the city centre with a hospital departments with 25 patient beds. The health centre is only on call duty at office hours, but Loviisa citizens can also seek care at the Kymenlaakso central hospital. Loviisa is part of the Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS). Starting from 2023, the wellbeing services county of Eastern Uusimaa will take responsibility of public healthcare. Both the public and the private sector offer physiotherapy and dental care. There is also a Mehiläinen work healthcare station in the city centre.

Rescue
Rescue operations in Loviisa are handled by the rescue department of Eastern Uusimaa. There are ten voluntary fire brigades in the Loviisa area, and Fortum has its own industrial fire brigade for the Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant.

Transport
Highway 6, which runs northwards towards Kouvola and Lappeenranta, branches off at the former Pernå municipality from Highway 7 (E18) between Porvoo and Loviisa.

Politics
Loviisa is led by a town council with 35 members. The Swedish People's Party gained majority in the municipal election in 2017.

 * Swedish People's Party 18 seats
 * Social Democratic Party 8 seats
 * National Coalition Party 3 seats
 * Non-aligned (former True Finns) 2 seats
 * Green League 2 seats
 * Centre Party 2 seats

Notable people

 * Toivo Mäkelä (1909–1979), actor
 * Jaana Toivari-Viitala (1964–2017), egyptologist
 * Eva Wahlström (born 1980), professional boxer
 * Victoria Åberg (1824–1892), painter

Mikael Agricola, the father of the Finnish literary language, was born in the village of Torsby in Pernå, which now belongs to Loviisa.

Twin towns — sister cities
Town twinning in Finland started from Nordic cooperation. In addition to municipalities and municipal organisations, the citizens' organisation Pohjola-Norden has been an active participant, and also has a local organisation in Loviisa. During the last decades town twinning has also spread to other countries, which in the case of Loviisa include Estonia and Hungary.

Loviisa is twinned with:
 * Fjallabyggð (Ólafsfjörður), Iceland
 * Haapsalu, Estonia
 * Hillerød, Denmark
 * Horten, Norway
 * Karlskrona, Sweden
 * Kohila, Estonia
 * Paks, Hungary
 * Varash, Ukraine

title: Loviisa


text:
User talk:H0119907

Greetings! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you have questions or doubts of any sort, do not hesitate to post them on the Village Pump, somebody will respond ASAP. Other helpful pages include: Have fun! --Jiang 07:09 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Welcome, newcomers
 * How does one edit a page
 * Manual of style
 * Naming conventions

-

Is there some kind of Wikipedia experiment going on at the University of Hong Kong? We're getting lots of user accounts following the same schema, most of them with university email addresses. --Eloquence 04:39 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Oh, is it a whole class doing the same project? But is it a good idea to use student number as username?  It is convenient but lack of personality! A former HKU student

 * It looks like they've been instructed to make a few contributions to Hong Kong topics each. Oh well, at least they weren't instructed to write plausible-sounding nonsense in random pages. I guess we should count our blessings. -- Tim Starling 04:48 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Questions have been posed on your user page: User:H0119907 --Jiang

Yes, bland user names. But blame it on the students who (for reasons I cannot fathom) have chosen to stick with the robotic names, rather than choose a nickname. (Fuzheado 05:38 16 Jul 2003 (UTC))

You need to put some content on your newspaper pages. An image and some links is not an encyclopedia entry. I've deleted Sun Daily, but I thought I'd give you a chance to add content to the others, and reinstate the dleted one as a proper article   jimfbleak 12:55 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Unverified images
Hi! Thanks for uploading Image:Pot-tea.jpg. I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use if you release it under the GFDL, or  if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks very much, Kbh3rd 19:22, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More unverified images
Also, I'd like to know the status of Image:3pot.jpg and Image:Basic.jpg. As said above, if you don't know how to tag them, just let me know how you got them, and I'll tag them for you. grendel|khan 22:39, 2004 Dec 19 (UTC)

Also Image:Education system in Hong Kong.jpg --Aqua 07:33, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

Image:Air-conditioned tram.jpg and Image:Air-conditioned tram2.jpg as well. --Ricky81682 (talk) 00:35, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Also Image:Teapocket.jpg and Image:Teapocket2.jpg Silverfish 13:44, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Image:Air-conditioned tram.jpg
Burgundavia (✈ take a flight?) 11:05, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:H0119907


text:
User talk:Kliment~enwiki

Greetings! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you have questions or doubts of any sort, do not hesitate to post them on the Village Pump, somebody will respond ASAP. Other helpful pages include: Have fun! --Jiang 07:12 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Welcome, newcomers
 * How does one edit a page
 * Manual of style
 * Naming conventions

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Kliment. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Kliment~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 01:10, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Kliment~enwiki


text:
User talk:Hyedrum

Greetings! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you have questions or doubts of any sort, do not hesitate to post them on the Village Pump, somebody will respond ASAP. Other helpful pages include: Have fun! --Jiang 07:13 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Welcome, newcomers
 * How does one edit a page
 * Manual of style
 * Naming conventions

title: User talk:Hyedrum


text:
User talk:H0044328

Greetings! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you have questions or doubts of any sort, do not hesitate to post them on the Village Pump, somebody will respond ASAP. Other helpful pages include: Have fun! --Jiang 07:27 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Welcome, newcomers
 * How does one edit a page
 * Manual of style
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Nomination of Little Astrology Prince for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Little Astrology Prince is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Little Astrology Prince until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. MakeSense64 (talk) 12:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Little Astrology Prince

The article Little Astrology Prince has been proposed for deletion  because of the following concern:
 * No sign of notability. AfD failed to gain consensus because of lack of turnout

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. IRWolfie- (talk) 11:10, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

title: User talk:H0044328