RE: Riyadh Emergency response teams and their time to respond...Back in 1998 I was flying a VIP B-727...Mutt knows who for...We departed Riyadh for Beiruit to pick up the principal, and then take him and his party to Tunis...
Fuel being cheaper in Saudi than other places (go figure???) we fuelled for both legs...
Immediately after "Positive Rate, Gear Up", and I do mean immediately, the Cabin Chief, whom I had flown with in VIP Ops for yrs., came up front and informed us that the cabin was full of "smoke"...
The F/O was flying, I turned and looked, and I couldn't see more than 10' back into the lounge...
I donned my mask and smoke goggles, instructed the crew to do the same, took control of the A/C and ordered the F/E (also a long-time crewmember with me) to start dumping fuel...
We weighed, well let's just say we were an empty B-727 100 with 75,000 lbs of fuel on board...In any case our max landing weight was 142,500 and I wanted to get it as close as possible, but with no thought of climbing and going into holding to get down to weight...(remember Valujet?)
We didn't know where the smoke was coming from but it was acrid...We had departed to the south from the left side...I elected to keep the flaps at 15 and hold 160 -180, with 160 kts being our min threshold target with flaps 30..
(the 727 will fly at 160 with 15 flaps downhill regardless of the weight.)
I told the F/O to declare an EMERGENCY, as the Saudi Controllers understand that, and that we wanted the equipment, we were going to remain in right traffic and land on the right side...
As it turns out I cut it too close and didn't compensate for the weight of the A/C...When we rolled out on final, we ende up aligned with the left side, (my fault) and informed the controllers that's the runway we were going to end up on...
I observed the Saudi Rescue Crews, who were in place for our arrival on the right side, race to the left side (by the Gen Av Ramp)...
We landed, evacuated, and they were there...total time of this event was 7 minutes tops, from declaring the emergency to brakes set, and the CFR response was outstanding...
The 3 F/A's didn't don their Abayas and nothing was said...
Turns out the smoke was coming out of the venliation system via the gasper fan...An electrical harness had shorted out, the rubber coating was melting, and the resulting smoke was pumped into the cabin by the gasper fan...
The point of my post is to say that from the time we told ATC of our intentions, Riyadh CFR was on the way...VERY WELL HANDLED by Riyadh, in my opinion...