We handled that Saudi case as part of HR management / CRM course .....
There could not have been a better example of how CRM failed ...
The captain denied anything was wrong till right at the last minute ...he in fact whistled his way through most of the tradegy ..
The first officer was a youngster that was only on board , literally because he spoke english well ...very very limited experience
The Eng was later found to be dyslexic ...he even paid for his own training because no one else would bother hiring him/training him ...
When the first bells, then stopped , then went off went off again to signal a fire in the cargo hold ..the captain ask the Eng for the check list ..last mentioned looked then announced there was'nt any....but when the Eng lleft the cockpit on the request of the captain to go aft to check personally what the hell was potting ...the captain picked up the file and found the check list needed ...he then muttered how stupid the Eng was ...and then instead of following the check list he closed it and replaced the file in it's place ....
The cabin crew came several times to teel the captain that the passengers are panicking about the smoke billowing through the floor boards ..he continued to whistle and then finally made the decision to divert ...ATC was ill informed about the seriousness of the matter at first and this subsequently led to the FS not being fully prepared ..not that that would have changed the outcome ...
They landed and instead of applying max bvraking and stopping the machine and evacuating ASAP ...they rolled right through to the end .....much to dismay/suprise of the emergency services in attendance ..who then had to give chase ...no final app / approach checks were done ...or were not done properly ..no proper briefing from the captain ..hence they forgot to de-pressurise the cabin ...so the the fire services stood by helplessly watching the people geeting incinerated inside ...
The mind boggles !!!!
As I say an excellent CRM case study...even more so if you get to watch the "make shift" reconstruction video ...
