Hong Kong - A China Airlines jetliner aborted its landing at Hong Kong International Airport because of wild weather and returned to Taiwan leaving about 300 passengers in a state of shock, a media report said Friday.

Flight CI 617 rose to 3,000 metres in a minute and turned back to Taipei at 12:47 am Thursday after it had descended to just 100 metres above sea level on its landing approach, the South China Morning Post said.

Passengers were not told by the pilot what had happened until 20 minutes after the landing had been aborted.

The flight had been delayed for more than four hours when it left Taipei's Taoyuan airport at 10:30 pm on Wednesday because of severe tropical storm Kammuri, which had grounded flights in Hong Kong.

A Morning Post reporter onboard the flight said: "I saw the airport's lines of lights so I believed we were about to land. But it just climbed up steeply. The force was so abrupt that I felt that I was going to vomit."

Thomas Yan, another passenger onboard the flight, said the plane felt as if it was "floating" on its approach. He criticized the airline for not telling passengers what had happened until the plane had climbed and headed for Taiwan.

"It was extremely irresponsible for China Airlines not to explain everything to passengers and not to offer passengers an option to change planes," Yan said, adding that he felt like "we were nearly killed."

The Civil Aviation Department said the pilot had decided to abort the landing 2 kilometres from the runway and had been instructed by air traffic controllers to climb to at least 1,500 metres after they had said they would return to Taipei.

The flight finally landed safely in Taipei at 2 am Thursday. Most passengers had to wait an hour before departing for Hong Kong on a flight which arrived in the territory at 4:30 am.

A China Airlines spokesman said the pilots decided to abort the landing and return to Taiwan because cross winds exceeded safe limits at the airport. (dpa)