The name of Dr. Michael Saba became linked to an important chapter of Saudi aviation history. He worked alongside HRH Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz — Special Adviser to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and founder and chairman of the board of trustees of Al-Turath Foundation — to document the story of King Abdulaziz’s aircraft and its pilot, in a work that combined personal narrative with photographs and documents.
On July 28, 2026, Dr. Michael Saba passed away, after a career that spanned writing, teaching, humanitarian activityand public service. In bidding farewell to his friend, Prince Sultan bin Salman recalled years of friendship and shared work, saying: “I knew my friend Dr. Michael Saba as a loyal and sincere man. We shared a friendship that spanned many years, forged by his love for the Kingdom and his passion for its history. Together we documented an important part of Saudi aviation history, in the book The Gifts of History: The Story of King Abdulaziz and His Pilot, published by Al-Turath Foundation in English, accompanied by a documentary film, and later published in Arabic. Dr. Saba has passed away, but his memory endures through works that will never be forgotten.”
Prince Sultan bin Salman and the late Dr. Michael Saba during the Hangar Talks session at the SAND & FUN 2024 expo
The Aircraft That Came Before the Airports
The story documented by Prince Sultan bin Salman and Dr. Michael Saba goes back to February 14, 1945, when King Abdulaziz — may God have mercy upon him — met American President Franklin Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy, a historic meeting that helped shape the course of relations between the Kingdom and the United States. Among the fruits of that meeting was President Roosevelt’s gift to King Abdulaziz of a Douglas DC-3 aircraft, flown to the Kingdom by American Captain Joe Grant. The aircraft arrived in a country whose network of airports, runways and air-navigation facilities was not yet complete, making it an early milestone in the development of civil aviation and a new means of connecting the Kingdom’s regions and supporting its growth.
King Abdulaziz and President Franklin Roosevelt aboard the American warship USS Quincy, 1945
The gifted DC-3 aircraft
From Memory to Documentation
Decades after that flight, many of its details remained preserved in the pilot’s memory. This marked the beginning of the most important phase in documenting this history: Saba reached Captain Joe Grant, documented his first-hand testimony, and gathered the rare photographs Grant had kept from his time in the Kingdom. That testimony and those photographs formed the documentary foundation on which the project was built.
In 2006, Grant returned to Riyadh at the age of ninety-eight to see the aircraft he had flown more than six decades earlier, now restored and preserved at the Saqr Al-Jazira Aviation Museum. Standing before it, he was overcome with emotion, reliving in a single moment a distant journey and an entire era in the beginnings of Saudi aviation.
Prince Sultan bin Salman, Captain Joe Grant and Dr. Michael Saba, Riyadh, 2006
Prince Sultan bin Salman presenting a model of the DC-3 to Captain Joe Grant, at Al-Udhaybat in Diriyah, Riyadh, 2009
A Book and Three Milestones in the Documentation Journey
The book’s journey began with Grant’s testimony and photographs. Its first milestone came in 2009, with the launch of the first edition, titled King Abdulaziz: His Plane and His Pilot, during the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh air show in Wisconsin. There, at the age of 101, Grant returned to the cockpit of a DC-3 aircraft, joined aboard by Prince Sultan bin Salman and Hall Delano Roosevelt — bringing together the grandsons of the two men with whom the story began, alongside the pilot who had flown the aircraft to the Kingdom.
Prince Sultan bin Salman, Delano Roosevelt, Joe Grant and his son Edward, with Dr. Saba visible on the right
The second milestone came in 2016, when Al-Turath Non-Profit Foundation adopted the project and published its expanded English edition, The Gifts of History: The Story of King Abdulaziz and His Pilot, prepared by Prince Sultan bin Salman and Dr. Michael Saba, accompanied by a documentary film.
The third milestone came in 2024, with the publication of the revised and expanded Arabic edition, titled A Plane from History: King Abdulaziz and His Pilot. It was launched during the SAND& FUN 2024 expo in Riyadh — the last occasion that brought Prince Sultan bin Salman together with his friend Michael Saba.
Publications of Al-Turath Foundation
Thus, the work that brought together Prince Sultan bin Salman and Michael Saba went beyond the boundaries of a book and a film. It preserved the testimony of one of the witnesses to those beginnings, and made the story of King Abdulaziz’s aircraft a living part of Saudi aviation’s memory. What the two men accomplished together remains a documentary legacy that goes beyond the story of an aircraft or a pilot’s journey — it preserves the memory of a nation’s early beginnings, and affirms that documenting a country’s memory does not start with the archive alone, but with listening to those who lived that history, and then safeguarding their testimony for generations to come.
