Saudi 163
 

Here: https://lessonslearned.faa.gov/Saudi...tReportSAA.pdf

The report from the Saudi AIB can, of course, be relied upon to tell the true story.

It is difficut to tell whether DR is being facetious or not here.
I read the report as a pretty comprehensive document and would be interested to hear if anyone has identified faults, omissions or other caused for concern. Much detail was provided by manufacturer and UK forensic labs and reported presumably fully. The manufactureer or other agencies would have had something to say had their reports been cherry-picked.
All reports from witnesses agree in all major details.
Ther is no evidence whatsoever of the alleged King's aircraft causing movement delays as reports from aircraft deperting ahead of 163's landing make no mention of it and surely wuld hve to ave done were this the case.

If people do have concerns about this report please, what are they?

I expect DR is alluding to the fact that, like all countries ruled by unelected dictators, the guy at the top decides what the truth is.

That said, a lot of aircrew will have studied this accident as part of their CRM training (or whatever it is called now) and concluded that the crew stuffed it up the most. So I doubt it is the contentious in any way that is significant.

And even if it is...we are never finding out.

I too was involved in this incident at one remove. Back then, I was working for IAL and seconded to Lockheed for their Civil Aviation programme. Initially hired for ground radio, I soon became involved in Nav Aids and wound up at one stage as supervisor for Nav Aids & Comms for all the Western sector of Saudi Arabia. When the accident occurred, my mate in the next office to mine was dispatched to Riyadh as an ICAO rep and another mate was sent up there to do the photography. The photographs were always the property of the Saudi authorities but I was able to view quite a few of them and they were horrific. I was tasked with transcribing all the ATC tapes to cassette format for transmission to Washington and I can tell you that the official report does indeed have some deficiencies. I won't go into detail here but chief among those deficiencies are parts of the Captain's communications, particularly with the fire service. My ICAO mate returned with some more tales and between his reports and the tape recordings, there is no doubt the huge loss of life was down to a combination of the Captain's standard Saudi attitude (such as I am the Captain, we will do what I decide) and the F.E.'s dyslexia. I was surprised to see it referred to in the report but it meant he was unable to find his way around the relevant manuals at the time. One of the people referred to in the report is the director of the programme we were involved in (update/renewal of ATC system, building of the new airports at Jeddah & Riyadh etc), Mohammed Dabaagh. He was effectively my boss's boss and a real character who really enjoyed his Johnny Walker Red! He was obviously not too happy with the way the investigation was being handled and, by an amazing coincidence, he soon found himself removed from the programme and about the same time, Lockheed lost the contract, with Bedix F.E. taking over.

Kelvin, appreciate this, makes interesting reading.

At least to the Saudi's credit, they did highlight the pretty poor (and that is charitable) training records of all three of the flight-deck crew, numerous write-ups and recommendations to terminate training/courses at various stages in their careers.

Interesting - that was one part of the report that jarred with me.
I read it as a pretty clearcut attempt to damn the crew with as much blame as possible yet not a mention of shortcomings in the training or selection system that allowed such a bunch of misfits to fly together on the line. I really was expecting an excoriating piece on the trainng system and how it had so obviously failed but apparently not.

Info
 

I was a captain with Saudia when this happened. The info about a Royal Flight holding them up is untrue. There was a 737 that departed and a DC-8 that was stopped. SV-163 had nothing to delay them. All 3 of the crew were pretty weak. I knew them personally.

More reading material here https://skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/1342.pdf

This is the full Accident Report.
PRESIDENCY of CIVIL AVIATION JEDDAH SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabian Airlines Lockheed L-1011, HZ -AHK Riyadh, Saudi Arabia August 19th 1980
Saudi Arabian Airlines L-IOll, HZ-AUK, Flight 163 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia August 19, 1980

Various text added above to facilitate searching.

Saudi 163
Saudi flight 163