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Cyclone Noguri disrupts air traffic over weekend

A man tries to move his scooter in Taitung County yesterday after his house was flooded following the heavy rainfall brought by extratropical cyclone Noguri. PHOTO: CHANG TSUN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES

Heavy rainfall brought by extratropical cyclone Noguri disrupted air traffic between Taiwan and Hong Kong, causing airlines to cancel dozens of flights over the weekend.

The Taoyuan International Airport Office reported that close to 100 flights were affected by the rain over the weekend. On Saturday, 21 flights heading to Hong Kong were canceled, while 26 flights were delayed.

As of press time, more than 30 flights were affected yesterday. A China Airlines flight bound for Hong Kong on Saturday was reported to have been in the air for approximately eight hours, going to and fro three times. The captain finally returned to Taipei Taoyuan International Airport on Saturday evening.

Thousands of passengers were stranded at the airport, most of them scheduled to board flights with Cathay Pacific Airways, EVA Airways and China Airlines.

Six flights scheduled to land in Hong Kong and Macao on Saturday night were forced to land briefly at the Kaohsiung International Airport. The Kaohsiung Airport office director Cao Ren-gang (曹仁剛) confirmed that all of them had departed later that night after the weather cleared.

At least 50 flights out of Hong Kong were delayed as well. Hong Kong’s flagship airline Cathay Pacific announced yesterday it had canceled four flights to Auckland, Johannesburg, Los Angeles and Amsterdam as a result of the storm.

Hong Kong raised its earliest typhoon alert in more than half a century as localized flooding incidents were reported across the city.

Meanwhile, 18 Chinese fishermen were reported missing and thousands of residents were evacuated from flooded homes. Chinese rescue officials expanded their search yesterday for the 18 Chinese fishermen. Five rescue ships and two helicopters had been deployed in the search mission, said an official with the Hainan provincial disaster relief office who gave his surname as Wu (吳).

Noguri first made landfall in China’s Hainan Province as a typhoon on Friday, disrupting power supplies and damaging farmland.

It later weakened to a tropical storm and landed in eastern Guangdong Province on Saturday afternoon.

The Central Weather Bureau said that Noguri had further weakened to become an extratropical cyclone yesterday and a frontal system was expected to arrive in Taiwan today.

Showers are likely in the nation’s northern and eastern regions, as well as Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. More stable weather is likely after Wednesday, the bureau said.
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