[infowarrior]

Years ago, a Saudi 7474 carrying some 400 pilgrims caught fire on the ground when one of the passengers lit a small charcoal brazier in the cabin in order to cook his dinner..I beleive over 250 were killed.

Actually, it was a Saudia Lockheed L1011 which caught fire, and killed all those people, in 1980-81. I was stationed at Riyadh International Airport at the time of this disaster, and at one time had a clandestine Polaroid of the aircraft, with the entire top of the cabin burned off.

It was later determined that a passenger had lit something like a sterno stove, to heat some tea, or some such, which then somehow ignited the oxygen system, causing a huge conflagration in the passenger cabin. More lives might have been saved, however the stricken aircraft's request for an emergency landing had been denied by the airport, due to the arrival of the Royal Airplane at the same time...

the infowarrior

[indcons]

An Islamic scientist at work??

[Ax]

You're spot on, infowarrior. I flew into Riyadh at that time on a USAF C-12 from the embassy in Jeddah. The burnt-out hulk of that aircraft was still on the runway. The story going around then was that a "hill Paki," one guy who was pretty unsophisticated, fired up his gas burner to brew some tea. The plane landed, but by then the fire was burning so hot that noone, crew or pax, were able to get out. That "hill Paki" was coming from Waziristan to make his Hajj.

Fortunately, they're not ALL hill Pakis. Some two years after that, a Pakistani doctor performed a triple bypass on my 40-year old bod at Washington Hospital Center.