On the 19th of August, 1980, a mid-air emergency forced Saudia Flight 163 was to
make an emergency landing at Riyadh International Airport.
The crew managed what appeared to be a smooth landing, touching down on the runway where
emergency services were waiting to offer assistance. But despite this successful
emergency landing, not a single person who boarded the flight that day would survive.
Flight 163 was crewed by three men. The Captain was Mohammed Khowyter, a pilot with more than
7,000 flight hours to his name. His record reflected that he was a slow learner,
and required more training than other pilots. The First Officer was Sami Abdullah Hasanain,
a man who was not very familiar with the aircraft, and had previously been removed
from flight school due to poor performance, before eventually managing to qualify. The
Flight Engineer was Bradley Curtis, a man who had failed to qualify as a Captain or First Officer,
and had subsequently been forced to pay for his own training in order to retain his job.
Though the crew collectively did not have the best record, they were nonetheless qualified enough,
and had passed all relevant tests, assessments and medical exams.
The first leg of the journey went smoothly. The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar departed from
Qu'aid-e-Azam International Airport in Pakistan at 6:32pm local time. Passengers enjoyed an
uneventful flight to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where there was a planned two-hour layover.
During this time all passengers disembarked, the aircraft was restocked and refuelled, and
passengers who would be continuing to the final destination of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, re-boarded.
The plane took off once more… but just minutes into this flight the crew radioed
Air Traffic Control, stating that they would be returning urgently to Riyadh,
and that they would need fire trucks to be present when they landed. Air traffic controllers quickly
cleared a route for them back to the airport. The aircraft turned around and returned to Riyadh.
It touched down in front of a bank of waiting fire appliances and emergency workers – all of
whom expected that the plane would make an emergency stop directly in front of them.
It did not. Instead it gradually slowed down, then taxied onto a nearby taxiway,
completing a precise 180 degree turn to do so. It was only after it had completed this
manoeuvre that the Captain radioed to say that he was now beginning an evacuation. Emergency workers
raced from the place where they’d been staged to the place where the plane had stopped, ready
to meet passengers as they evacuated. But, as minutes ticked by, nobody emerged from the plane.
Smoke leaked from the fuselage, shortly followed by flames. Despite the best
efforts of the emergency workers on scene, the plane was swiftly consumed by fire. The
emergency exits remained closed the entire time, and not a single person emerged.
There had been 301 people on board the plane – 287 passengers and 14 crew. Many of those
travelling had been completing religious pilgrimages. In some cases whole families
were lost in the course of what should have been one of the most important journeys of their lives.
Investigators were left with two questions. What had happened to cause the fire on board the plane?
And why had the Captain not brought the aircraft to an emergency stop and evacuated as quickly as
he could? It seemed as though the few minutes that would have been saved by not taxiing down
the runway might have made all the difference. The question of the source of ignition was
difficult to answer. An investigation was unable to conclude with absolute certainty what had
caused the fire, but through a painstaking process of elimination it was possible to determine that
it started in the rear cargo hold, and that the source of ignition was probably consumed by the
fire. It was, most likely, something inside an item of passenger luggage. Investigators
did discover two butane stoves in the wreckage, though it could not be determined if it was these
that started the fire, or something else. The flight data recorder and cockpit voice
recorder showed that, once the fire had begun, the crew made numerous mistakes,
and failed to communicate clearly again and again – each mistake costing valuable time.
The crew first became aware of a problem when one and then two smoke detectors in
the cargo hold were triggered. Rather than immediately treating this as an emergency,
however, the crew spent almost five minutes deciding what to do. The Captain seemed reluctant
to make a decision, and instead questioned the much-less-experienced Flight Engineer:
Captain: So we’ve got to be returning back right?
Flight Engineer: Both "A" and "B" aft cargo smoke detection
Captain: So we have smoke there? Flight Engineer: I would say so, yeah
Captain: What's the procedure for it in the checklist?
After this exchange Flight Engineer Curtis attempted to look up the correct procedure. Due
to his dyslexia he may have found this difficult to do in such a stressful situation – and ended
up looking in the wrong handbook. After declaring that there was no procedure, he spent more time
testing the sensors in the cargo hold for a fault… and in doing so allowed fresh oxygen
into the cargo hold, potentially feeding the fire. After some time, Flight Engineer Curtis suggested
that he should go back into the cabin and look for smoke. He did so. While he was gone, Captain
Khowyter referred to him as a donkey, and told First Officer Hasanain the correct place to find
the procedure for the problem they were facing. It was only when Flight Engineer Curtis returned
to the cockpit and declared that there was indeed a fire that the decision to turn back was made.
The working environment in the cockpit as they raced back towards Riyadh was chaotic.
Captain Khowyter frequently had to ask others to repeat what they had said,
as he did not hear it the first time. Two flight attendants entered to report that there
was smoke and flames in the cabin, and later that passengers were fighting in the aisles.
At various points, Captain Khowyter could be heard singing to himself, while Flight Engineer Curtis
repeated the phrase, “No problem, no problem, no problem,” over and over again – both likely
attempts to remain calm that, unfortunately, added to the noise and confusion in the cockpit.
In this chaotic setting several critical decisions were delayed,
or simply not made by Captain Khowyter. Flight attendants asked several times if they should
evacuate passengers as soon as they landed, but the Captain’s only response was to tell flight
attendants to take their positions for landing. He later said directly to his fellow crew:
“Tell them to not evacuate.” It is possible that his intention
was to communicate that passengers should not try to evacuate until the plane was
safely landed and stopped… but if this was the case, it was not communicated.
Vital seconds were also spent on unnecessary tasks. As the crew worked through the checklist
for their emergency landing, they struggled to prioritise, and wasted time on things such
as turning on no smoking signs, and repeatedly confirming tasks that had already been completed.
While these communication failures did waste a significant amount of time,
the failure to perform an emergency stop on landing was by far more damaging. By this stage
the cockpit voice recorder had cut out, but after completing his taxi and precise 180 degree turn,
Captain Khowyter radioed that tower to say that he was beginning an evacuation… indicating that
he was still in control at the time, and that his actions had been intentional.
Subsequent examination of the brakes revealed that he could have stopped the
plane sooner if he wished, but instead chose a gradual slowdown and a taxi off the runway.
Additionally, the crew failed to correctly manage cabin pressurisation on landing, meaning that the
doors could not be opened from the outside. The prevailing theory is that the Captain
acted as he did because he simply did not grasp the severity of the situation. He may have been
more concerned about not blocking a runway, or about managing a safe and orderly evacuation,
than about getting passengers off the plane as quickly as possible.
It is also possible that, by keeping the engines running as he taxied down the runway, he was
attempting to ventilate the cabin and remove smoke. Though in doing this, he was unsuccessful.
Once the evacuation had begun, it appears that flashover occurred almost instantly, with the
fire and fumes spreading rapidly. The official report notes that conditions within the plane may
have gone from merely unpleasant, to completely deadly in the space of as little as 30 seconds.
The indecision, poor communication, lack of urgency and questionable choices of the
crew were heavily criticised. At the same time the flight attendants were commended for their
heroic efforts throughout the disaster. It appeared that they had successfully
persuaded passengers to stay calm and in their seats despite smoke and flames in the cabin.
They had also used on board fire extinguishers to try and suppress the fire, and conveyed multiple
urgent updates to the captain… who had, unfortunately, not responded in time or correctly.
The loss of flight 163 is now used as a case study, vividly illustrating the importance of
clear communication and swift action in a crisis. Emergencies on board aircraft cannot always be
avoided… but when they do take place, decisive action can make all the difference to the outcome.