If you take the Airport Express from Hong Kong airport to the city, you can get a glimpse of a cableway going up the Lantau hills disappearing into the fog. This is the Ngong Ping cable car which connects the Tung Chung township to Ngong Ping, a highland area of the island and a government tourist project. The $125 million project was initiated in 2004 and completed in late 2006. Originally built and operated by Skyrail-ITM - an Australian company specializing in cable car attractions, the project was overtaken by Hong Kong’s MTR corporation following negligence related incidents in 2007.

The project didn’t have the smoothest of starts, on June 17th 2006, during a trial run right before opening, the entire system halted and left 500 people stuck in the cable cars for hours and several hundred people stuck at the hilltop village. All trial runs were cancelled at this point and after three months of repair work following the incident as well as damage caused by a typhoon, the cableway was opened to the public in September, 2006.  

On June 11th, 2007, just a year after the first opening date, the cableway was closing for the night when a car suddenly plunged into the ground. The car fell on a road below, luckily leaving no one injured. Following the incident, a Skyrail-ITM employee faced criminal charges for negligence which was said to be the cause of the accident. After the major incidents the system has had its fair share of problems with halts in the operation, but serious incidents have since been avoided.

The 5.7km cableway departs at the Tung Chung station which is located next to the city development. For those willing to jump into one of the cars, the 25 minute ride takes you atop Ngong Ping providing astonishing scenery of the Lantau Park and Tung Chung bay as well as the Hong Kong Airport Island. The Ngong Ping village, which resembles a miniature part of a Disney world, was built at the other end as part of the tourism project. A somewhat more authentic attraction at the top is the Po Lin monastery, built in 1906. The Tian Tan Buddha statue which is visible from the cableway as well as the village, however, is not an original part of the monastery.

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01  view towards the top
02  the airport island
03 tung chung township