Five minutes before I was due to leave I found our flight was cancelled. Although we were reassigned to a flight the next day, the airline never once tried to contact us. The airport next morning landside was chaos. But when we made it to airside the situation was worse.

Most passengers did not have gate numbers on their boarding passes, and I roamed from gate to gate trying to discern our departure point. I tracked it down and we boarded, but 80 passengers weren't onboard. The captain announced that the luggage of the no-shows would be offloaded, but softened his approach to allow 50 latecomers on. Still, the chaos meant that costs were run up.

Who's liable?

Who should pay? The Hong Kong Observatory was criticized for failing to hoist Signal 8. Travelers accused airlines of not keeping them informed. The Airport Authority was unable to cope, and the public flight information system didn't display adequate information. Or should travel insurers pick up the tab?

These events brought back vivid memories for me. In 1998, chaos ensued when Chek Lap Kok Airport opened. Almost every IT system in the facility was blamed for something. The government initiated a public inquiry and I represented the supplier of the flight information display system.