mtkeller

Upon arrival, we parked away from the terminal building and a bus was provided to take us to the terminal, despite there being open jet bridges. (My colleagues who flew from IAD said they deplaned via jet bridge, so not sure what was going on other than an arrival in the middle of the night.) The first bus had enough seats that F passengers got to sit down, and then the J passengers crowded in around them. The bus pulling up behind us for Y had no seats (or maybe a couple for those with disabilities).

Since the FAs had not provided any landing cards in flight, I went straight for the table with landing cards and filled one out, being accustomed to arriving in the UK with a non-EU passport. Turns out that my visa type didn't require the card, but it didn't take that long and there were no queues beyond the ones forming from our flight. The immigration agent didn't seem to speak English, but he used my visa to pull up information on my computer. He wrote a number in my passport in Arabic (note that Arabic doesn't use the digits commonly called "Arabic numerals!) and stamped it. I then took my luggage to an X-ray machine and put it through. If anyone was watching it, he was asleep, it seemed. (There was a helper there ensuring that no one carried even the smallest bag that hadn't been put through the machine.

After being cleared as having no contraband, I went through the arrivals door and found my driver from the University. We got in the University's giant suburban and started off for the hotel. Given low traffic levels at that time of night, I didn't really get much exposure to Saudi driving, other than noticing that lane markings were more advisory than something that you were expected to follow.