Stranded, squeezed and seething as Hong Kong airport shuts down
When Edith Yeung landed at Hong Kong airport around 6 pm on Monday, her plane’s crew announced that all connecting flights had been canceled, without saying why.
That was Yeung’s first inkling of the chaos that awaited thousands of passengers as Hong Kong’s international airport, the busiest in Asia, imposed an unprecedented shutdown after protesters swarmed into the terminal.
Yeung, a partner at the venture-capital firm Proof of Capital, waited in line with hundreds of others for an Airport Express train to the city center. The air-conditioning appeared not to be working, and at least one woman fainted in the heat and humidity of a Hong Kong summer, Yeung said. When all the passengers managed to squeeze on to the train, the doors wouldn’t close properly.
