Issue Number 13

November 2007

Royal Flight Saudi Arabia 1999.

by Frank Chammings

When I retired I was offered a month's contract to assess the spares holding of the Royal Flight of Saudi Arabia with a good daily rate of pay, they had three Bell 214ST helicopters probably the largest two bladed helicopters in the world. I had to arrange a taxi from Okehampton to Exeter to catch the train to Heathrow. When I was at Halton I could go to the railway station at Okehampton and catch a train to Waterloo several times a day, now with our station out of public use I had to reassess my transport arrangements, it was best to go to Reading to get on the coach to Heathrow. I arrived fairly early at Heathrow and I checked in at British Airways and was almost immediately offered £250 to delay my flight to Jeddah as they were apparently overbooked. I thought seriously about this, but decided that as I had to contact my firm, Bristow Helicopters, which had in turn to contact SETE, the Greek owners/operators of the Royal Flight that I couldn't expect an answer before I took off, so I declined the offer even though I was promised hotel accommodation until the next flight.

At Heathrow I realized that I hadn't any spare razor blades and bought some. On arrival at Jeddah, I noticed that several European women on the flight had donned black abaya's (gowns) to proceed through Arrivals, they were obviously old hands and been there before. I was met by one of Bristow pilots seconded to the Royal Flight and with whom I shared the bungalow we were appointed during my stay. The bungalow was inside a large compound with the biggest satellite TV receiver I have ever seen, at least 15 feet in diameter, without TV the month would have been intolerable. It transpired that most ex-pats lived in compounds with guards manning the entrance gates. Having arrived on a Wednesday evening I was told that as Thursday was a half day and Friday being the local Sabbath was a day off I didn't have to report for work until Saturday morning, and, I was being paid for this! But, no booze.

On Saturday morning after having accrued several hundred pounds without doing anything I found out what my task was to be, SETE wanted to know how much the spares were worth, this meant researching each consumable and serialised component (overhaulable items, or rotables) in the Bonded Stores to find out the original price paid when it was purchased, by reference to the invoice. This was a rather sophisticated stock check. For an explanation, all civil aircraft parts are issued with an Approved Certificate which provides traceability from the parts manufacture, and in theory once the Approved Cert. is found the price paid is displayed as they are often combined with an invoice. All the Approved Certs were available although they were covered in sand and in boxes kept in a godown (warehouse). The reason for the exercise was that spares from an Athens detachment had been added to the Jeddah stock and no one had kept track of the cost of the stock.

I was asked to do this stock check as my retirement had been delayed for three months because I was carrying out a stock check on our worldwide operations for our managing director who wanted to sell our surplus stock to finance a new computerized supply chain. I had a quick course on the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as I had previously been using the 20/20 spreadsheet (does anyone remember that) to record our OEI (one engine inoperative) incidents. Our IT department arranged to list all our overseas stores holdings which hadn't been used for the last two years to determine the surplus stock. I then received similar data from our American partners and combined the lists, this turned up several million dollars of spares, and it turned out that if we hadn't used the stock in two years no one else would have either so it would have been almost impossible to sell. At least we cleaned our stores out of mostly obsolete stock.

Back at Jeddah, I set up a system where the App Certs/invoices were found and dusted off and brought into a workshop, and as I carried the parts off the stores shelves I checked the App. Cert. against the invoice and listed the new stock and made out a fresh label for the part and placed the item in the stores. I then passed the info to a Philippino computer operator who made up the lists. There were a lot of Philipinos working for SETE who had contracts for most of the Royal Palace maintenance, they had their own section of the compound, don't mention racial discrimination.

The Royal Flight hangar was within the Royal Palace grounds, we entered the grounds through a gate and placed the car on two concrete piers to allow the underneath to be examined by the palace staff, our ID was checked at the same time. We then drove alongside the palace walls which were about 30 feet high until we reached the hangar. Just up the road the Royal Yachts were berthed and at lunchtime I often walked up to them to have a nose, they were huge. The Bell 214ST's in the hangar had gold plated fittings and some very nice seats, in fact they were very similarly equipped to the Super Pumas of the Oman Royal Flight which I had inspected a few years previously.

As the SETE compound was close to Jeddah airport and the shopping centre was in town, SETE provided a coach on one evening each week to go shopping and I took advantage of this. Navigating around the town was by noting the decorations on the roundabouts (r/b), there was the globe r/b, the car r/b and several others. The car r/b had a large concrete block in the centre with old American cars stuck in it at varying degrees. Downtown the centre square had an American steam locomotive complete with cow bars sitting in it. At prayer time, around 8pm, all the shops would shut, the staff would then attend prayers and then open up the shops again, some supermarkets were open 24/7 and they closed 5 times a day, the first being at sunrise. You just had to wait. When I used the public toilets for the first time it was the time that everyone washed their feet and this was close to the urinal, it was pandemonium I can now see why they had to wash their feet as they weren't too particular when using the urinal. The fixed price shops were very popular, similar to Poundland in Exeter, things in Jeddah were about a fiver, the remarkable thing was that in the land where hands were cut off thieves, we had to hand our shopping bags in at the entrance and given a tag which allowed us to get our bags back when leaving, presumably to prevent one shoplifting! I then found the same razor blades I had bought at H/Row and they were much cheaper!

From the shopping area the massive fountain in the Royal Palace grounds can seen, water is pumped up in the air to over 200 metres, it is very impressive. I intended to get a good suntan so at the weekends I tried to sunbathe for short times to start with and then hoped to extend the burn periods towards the end of my month. However, at the third weekend when I thought I was acclimatised enough to stay in the sun for good periods, the sky clouded over for the whole time so I left just as pale as I arrived so I got that wrong, when I got home and said that I had been in the Middle East no one believed me.

So I spent the month there going to the hangar within the Royal Palace and sorting out their spares for the Bell 214ST's they operated, I really earned the money, no booze for a month. The reason for the Royal Flight was that a Bell 214ST was flown on to the royal yacht, every weekend (Thursday and Fridays in the Middle East) they were there to fly the Royals to hospitals in the case of medical emergency. According to the pilots, the yachts sailed out beyond territorial waters and allegedly anything went with "persons" from all over being shipped in for entertainment.

The Bell 214ST helicopters that the Royal Flight used had originally been designed for use by Iran as heavy lifters, when the Shah of Iran was deposed the helicopters were still in the USA, Donald Rumsfeld offered them to Iraq and about 45 ended up there. Saddam Hussain apparently used them to gas the Kurds and the Americans were upset about this and cancelled all support for them. This meant that there were very few 214ST's around, British Caledonian Helicopters in Aberdeen operated 2 of them and were taken over by Bristow Helicopters when they collapsed. We couldn't believe the excessive operating cost of them but this was all down to the lack of serviceable aircraft to spread the manufacturing costs.

I will add a personal note that I have learned from spending a lot of time overseas, when abroad you are not in UK, this might be obvious, but so many people on holiday behave as if they are at home. The British Embassies and Consulates are not there for you, if you break the local laws watch out, you are on your own.

This reminds me, when in Abu Dhabi I had the use of a Toyota pick up, I was picked up three times by the police, once for not having my licence on me for which I was fined £5, the second time for having three people in the front, one of the lads had to ride in the back this being acceptable and the third time when a policeman demanded that I wash the vehicle as it was covered in sand, this in the Middle East where water is always short.