Operating to Jeddah in modern times

By Capt. G A Fernando,
RCyAF/ SLAF, Air Ceylon,
Air Lanka, Singapore Airlines and SriLankan Airlines

This has reference to Capt. Elmo Jayawardene’s and Mr Lionel Sirimanne’s (Uncle ‘Siri’ to most of us) articles regarding flights to Jeddah many moons ago with multiple night stops in the Douglas DC3 Dakota’s. Right at its inception in 1979, Air Lanka didn’t operate to or even in Saudi Arabian Air space. The two Boeing 707s plying between the Middle East and Europe used the more northern routes through Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Syria till the advent of the Iran-Iraq war. Then airlines were forced to stay south and fly westward across the Saudi Arabian Dessert and then go northwards from Hail. It was then that our pilots had to speak with Jeddah Control, whose radio coverage was mediocre at best and thus taxing their patience.

Today, the modern, ‘state of the art’ jet planes are capable of flying nonstop to Jeddah with no intermediate stops. Before they leave the ground, the pilots pre-programme their on-board computers on ground and they determine an imaginary ‘Green Line’ in the Airbuses or a ‘Magenta Line’ in the Boeings defining their proposed route. The displays provide them with a host of information. Amongst other things, how to proceed to their destination. They just follow that line in their navigation displays. Some say that the pilots have become aircraft operators and ‘children’ of that ‘computer generated line’. It has made flying more accurate.

Our fights to ‘Jiddah’ (as some Sri Lankans would say) were associated with carrying fare-paying pilgrims to Mecca. Our timing had to be perfect during the ‘Haj’ due to build-up of air traffic through the years. Miss-timing our arrivals at the ‘Haj Terminal’ involved heavy fines for the airline as the Terminal building could accommodate a limited number of aircraft. By Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) standards it was still a relatively very large amount.

When approaching Jeddah, usually the leader of the group (Nade Gura) will ask the flight crew for the ‘Miquat Point’. This is the point at which the pilgrims should prepare themselves mentally and physically for the task at hand. It was marked in our Aviation route maps with a little triangle. The Captains would also allow them the use of the on board Public Address system to conduct their prayers. Being capable of direct flight, the airlines would fly across the Arabian sea of the Indian Ocean to Oman and then the Saudi Arabian desert, over many wheat farms tracing circular patterns of green. Not many know that at one time (1995) Saudi Arabia was almost self-sufficient in Wheat. The policy has changed since, as the circular, US style irrigation systems in the desert were depleting precious ground water.

Since the direct flight times from Colombo were relatively short, the crews were allowed to do a turnaround flights in accordance with the flight duty time limitations with an extra Captain on board on board providing relief and get back to Colombo.

Flights from Singapore were longer and necessitated a night stop for the inbound crew. The off season frequency was once a week. As a result we had to stay one whole week in Jeddah. Since there was not much to do and the Five Star Hotel we ‘slipped’ in, had provided a crew room with cooking facilities, the crew would organise a shopping/ marketing party on the morning of the night after our arrival to buy food for the next six days. It was compulsory that all females wear an Abaya (a black garb provided by the hotel) over their clothes, when in public. One day, we met at the reception to go shopping, I noticed that some of the girls were wearing their short, shorts that could have normally been worn in Singapore under the Abaya. As some of them were on their first visit ever to Jeddah, being their Captain and the most senior member I had to advised them to exercise some decorum and change to a more acceptable dress as the Abaya’s didn’t cover up all their sins, especially on a windy day. Another time my Australian First Officer came down for the same exercise in a pair of shorts, showing off his knobby knees and that too did not seem like a good idea to me. So he was forced to do a quick change.

The girls (and boys) would cook every day and call the rest of us for Brunch and Dinner. Our allowances were based on the Hotel Coffee Shop Menu prices. This exercise would, after defraying the costs (deserts and all), came to a fraction of the Coffee shop prices thus providing home cooking, interesting company and a substantial saving for all. Only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the midday sun!

After one of these flight patterns, we took off one night in an Airbus A340-300 aircraft, from Jeddah to Singapore. Immediately after take-off, the standard operation procedure required us to select the wheels up, to reduce aerodynamic drag. We’ve been doing this for over a thousand times. This time, however, with an accompanying ‘ting’ a message came up on the computer display unit to say that the landing gear doors were not properly closed and as a result that there would be additional fuel burn and our destination, Singapore could not be reached. We then recycled the Landing Gear down and up, to see whether the situation would clear itself. The message remained the same. The most appropriate thing to do was to return to base (RTB).

Then another consideration had to be made regarding our operation. Our landing weight exceeding the maximum limiting landing weight. We were carrying fuel all the way to Singapore and therefore needed to get rid of some fuel to lighten our load. This process is known as ‘fuel dumping’. We could land above the Maximum Landing weight, in the event of an emergency, where time was of essence but will entail some mandatory checks on the gear after landing, to see whether we have broken anything or not.

We were in no hurry and besides dumping was the safer option, so we asked the control tower for an area (away from humanity) above which we could dump our extra fuel. If the aircraft flies high enough, the fuel ‘atomises’ into a fine mist. We were also not allowed to circle, when dumping fuel as it always possible for the jet engines to ingest the unburnt fuel. We were directed over the Jeddah harbour and instructed to fly outbound on a given heading over the Red Sea and then track inbound. So we flew outbound till the required load was reduced to half and then turned inbound to dump the other half. We were at the required weight when we were back over the harbour and then landed without any further incident. After shutting down engines, at the parking stand, we found the nose wheel doors, slowly dropped open and didn’t stay locked up. The engineers couldn’t rectify the problem immediately and we had to spend another night in Jeddah. The high point was that there were 220 ice creams on board that had to be consumed. The air crew and ground crew had many ice creams as they wished!

Back with SriLankan Airlines, I did many turnaround flights to Jeddah. My last flight to Jeddah was to ferry an empty Airbus A330 aircraft from London Heathrow. We flew eastwards to Zurich and then southwards to Rome and further south past Brindisi, in southern Italy and the Greek Islands, across the Mediterranean Sea  to overhead the port of Alexandrea, Followed the Nile (and the Green Line) to Cairo and then across the Red Sea to Jeddah. Since we had no fare-paying passengers, except for a dead heading (flying as passengers) crew. They had organised a party (loud music and all) in the First Class section on board while my First Officer and I flew the A330 to Jeddah it certainly was lonely at the ‘pointy end’, beyond the bullet (and sound) proof Flight Deck door and had only the stars in the night sky to keep us company.

Party or no party, watching the sights of northern France, the Swiss Alps and the Matterhorn in the dusk, Roma, Italy, Greek Islands, Mediterranean Sea, port of Alexandria, Egypt and the lights in the settlements of the Nile delta and the Aswan Dam, from 40,000 feet, all in ‘one go’, as advertised in our Flight Plan, made our day. Since the station staff had put us up in a resort by the Red Sea, the next day we were able to have a ‘dip’ in the sea, before heading for home a day later.

Yes, ‘Aviation’ has changed quite a lot from the fifties. Now, with the advent of the Covid-19, let us brace ourselves for further changes which may not be anything like what we have experienced before.