54 years ago
Good morning (afternoon/evening) to you all. Today, I’ll be discussing the tragic 😞 accident that befell Saudia Flight 163 on August 19, 1980. As I did with other aviation accident related posts, please 🙏🏻 wait until I finish telling you what happened before you comment 💬. With that out of the way, this is the heartbreaking 💔 story of Saudia 163. August 19, 1980, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦. A Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) Lockheed L-1011 TriStar (HZ-AHK) awaits takeoff clearance to Jeddah.
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2 months agoThe flight had just been refueled after arriving in Riyadh after flying in from Karachi 🇵🇰. Onboard the jumbo jet are 287 passengers and a crew of 14 (this included 15 infants). In command of SV163 is Mohammed Ali Khowyter (38). He had been a captain for Saudi Arabia’s flag carrier since 1965, but had recently been promoted to fly the TriStar, and only had 388 hours on the aircraft. Sitting next to him was First Officer (F/O) Sami Abdullah Hasanain (26). Hasanain had been flying for Saudia
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2 months agofor less than two years and had only 125 flying hours on the TriStar. Finally, there was the flight engineer. Bradley Curtis (42) had worked at Saudia since 1974 and had only been certified on the TriStar for only three months and had amassed only 157 flying hours on the TriStar. To put it simply, these pilots were not very good and here’s why:
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2 months agoCaptain Khowyter had experienced difficulties when training. Instructors at Saudia commented that he “had difficulty when requested to vary from a set pattern”, was “behind his aircraft” (the plane controlling him, not him controlling the plane), was “slow to learn”, “needed more training than normally required”, “failed recurrent training”, & “had difficulties in upgrading (to other aircraft).”
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2 months agoF/O Hasanain had experienced more trouble at Saudia than his captain. In 1975, Hasanain had actually been dropped from Saudia’s pilot training program due to poor progress. 2 years later, Hasanain was reinstated to the program as a result of “committee action”. But these pilots had NOTHING compared to the trouble that their flight engineer had whilst working for Saudia. Flight Engineer Curtis had been hired by Saudia in July 1974. In October of that same year, he was hired as a captain onboard
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2 months agothe Douglas DC-3 (a plane that was made in the 1930s that Saudia still had in its fleet at that time). In 1975, he began captain training aboard the Boeing 737 at United Airlines’ training facility in Denver, CO 🇺🇸 where he was terminated due to “unsatisfactory performance” and was demoted back to the DC-3. In 1978, he began training to become a first officer (F/O) aboard the 737 at Aer Lingus in Ireland 🇮🇪. Here, Curtis had a brief moment of success before he failed a check ride.
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2 months agoOn May 14, 1978, Curtis received his termination letter from Saudia to inform him that he had essentially been fired. The day after, he went to Saudia head offices to get his job back and convinced management that he’ll pay for his own flight engineer training himself. Saudia accepted this offer and he began training aboard the TriStar.
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2 months agoAt 9:08 PM, Saudia 163 took off 🛫 from Riyadh for the final leg to Jeddah and began to climb to up to its cruising altitude. 7 minutes after leaving Riyadh, one of two smoke detectors (A &B) located in the rear C-3 compartment blared, alerting ⚠️ Curtis to the presence of fire 🔥 in the cargo hold. “B aft cargo…” Curtis said. “What?” queried Khowyter. “Smoke detection, B aft cargo!” Hasanain broke out of his tranced state to ask, “What’s going on?”
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2 months ago“Did you turn it to the other one?” Khowyter asked. What the captain said isn’t really known. “Just in B” Curtis replies. “What?” Khowyter asked. “Not in A. Just in B.” What Curtis said is that smoke detector A in the C-3 cargo compartment hadn’t gone off, only smoke detector B, but it’s doubtful that Khowyter asked Curtis about this. “Just B” Khowyter said. “Yeah, A is okay.” Curtis replied. Khowyter relaxed, “Okay, so we can go on”, indicating that the flight could go towards Jeddah 🇸🇦.
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2 months agoAccording to the Saudia Lockheed L-1011 flight manual, the activation of a smoke detector is sufficient in diverting the aircraft to the nearest suitable airport (in this case, Riyadh Airport, now 60 miles behind them). However, Khowyter believed that one smoke detector going off isn’t sufficient enough for an emergency landing. Then, the A smoke detector began to sound. “There’s A!” Curtis exclaimed. “What?” Khowyter asked. “Now it’s both of them, A & B.” Curtis said.
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1 month ago“So, we got to be returning back, right?” Khowyter asked, as though it wasn’t his decision. “Both A & B aft cargo smoke detection,” Curtis repeated. “So we have smoke there,” said Khowyter. Curtis agreed. “I would say so, yeah,” he said. Incredibly, the pilots spent all this time deciding whether the activation of a smoke alarm indicated the presence of smoke! A little over one minute had now passed since the smoke alarm first activated.
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1 month agoSo far, the pilots seemed slightly slow on the uptake, but not dangerously so. It was rapidly becoming clear that this was a serious situation which warranted their undivided attention. “What’s the procedure for it in the checklist?” Khowyter asked. “Yeah, I am looking for it now,” said Curtis, leafing through the handbook looking for the appropriate checklist for this situation. It couldn’t have helped that Curtis’s dyslexia made it a struggle for him to read. Khowyter went back to singing.
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1 month agoFor some time Curtis tested to make sure the alarm wasn’t false, while narrating everything he was doing. After the test showed the alarms were working properly, Khowyter said, “We have cleared the situation.” It’s not clear why he said this or what he meant; perhaps he was misinterpreting the purpose of Curtis’ test.
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1 month agoFollowing up on Curtis’ earlier attempt to find the appropriate checklist for smoke in the cargo hold, Khowyter said, “There isn’t anything about it in the abnormal procedures, huh?” “Nothing about it,” said Curtis. “Should I go back there and see if I can find anything or smell anything?” Somehow, he failed to find the checklist even though he did look in the right section of the handbook, under ‘abnormal procedures.’ “What?” “Shall I go back there and see if I can smell anything?”
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1 month agoCurtis repeated. “Okay, sure,” said Khowyter. Curtis opened the cockpit door and added, “If I can see, smell something, I think we better go back.” After another short exchange, Curtis left the cockpit to check the cabin for signs of smoke. In the back of the passenger cabin, smoke was already seeping out of the cargo hold, catching the attention of passengers seated in the last few rows on the left side. Meanwhile in the cockpit, the captain and first officer continued discussing the situation.
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1 month agoBreaking his silence, Hasanain said, “Strange, no procedure for it…” “No procedure for it?” Khowyter said, pausing momentarily. “Tell them we’re returning back.” “To Riyadh,” Hasanain said. “We are sixty miles out,” said Khowyter. “Uh… we better go, go back to Riyadh.” Only now, 4 minutes after the smoke detection, did the pilots decide to return to the airport. This was not considered excessive at the time, although it would be today.
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1 month ago“By the way,” Khowyter said Hasanain, “he’s a jackass. In the abnormal, it is in the checklist.” Khowyter, evidently doubting his flight engineer’s capability, had checked the handbook himself and found the checklist for smoke in the cargo hold. Some fifteen seconds later, Curtis returned to the cockpit. “We got a fire 🔥 back there,” he said, slamming the door behind him. “We do?” Khowyter asked. “Yes we do,” said Curtis. “It’s… okay, call please,” Khowyter said to Hasanain.
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1 month ago“Tell him we’re coming back.” Hasanain keyed the radio and said, “One six three, we’re coming back to Riyadh.” “I would declare an emergency,” Curtis suggested. “Yeah,” said Khowyter. “Cleared to reverse course to Riyadh,” said the controller, “and, request reason?” “Declare emergency?” Hasanain asked. At that moment, a flight attendant burst into the cockpit. “Fire, fire in the cabin!” she said. Hasanain keyed his mic again and told the controller,
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1 month ago“Saudia one six three, we’ve got fire in the cabin and please alert the fire trucks 🚒.” He did not declare an emergency. “Okay, cleared back,” said the controller. “And if you’d like to descend, you can descend to any altitude you like.” “Okay,” Hasanain acknowledged. At Riyadh International Airport, fire trucks 🚒 scrambled to intercept the incoming L-1011. By this point, judging by the flight attendant’s comments, the raging fire 🔥 in the cargo hold had apparently burned through the cabin floor
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1 month agonear the last rows of seats on the left side. Passengers in the rear smoking section would have started to panic and try to move forward, although all indications are that the flight attendants managed to maintain order at this point. While Hasanain handled more procedural radio communications, one of the flight attendants went on the public address system and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, you are requested to return to your seats!” Meanwhile, on the radio, the controller asked,
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2 months ago