+1 on everyone who mentioned cabin/temp comfort as a priority regarding customer service.
I know Copa Airlines in Panama advise the pax via the PA when landing in PTY to lower the window shades and open the gaspers in the PSU before leaving the aircraft, so I dunno... I guess it helps. Here are my 2 cents, empirical, of course.
- Turning off APU bleed (or the APU itself for that matter, as in "external power now connected to the aircraft") before opening the main door is a huge no-no. I try to balance the shutting off of the APU bleed with the pax load of the plane, so as to not cut off the bleed to the pax while there's still a significant amount of pax on board. This will heat the cabin air right up
- Try your best to not let the temps rise in the first place by coordinating the use of bleed and external air. If the airplane is baking in the apron, it will heat up quickly and it will then be quite a task to get the temps back down. They might not come down at all until some good 20 minutes after takeoff!!!
- In my part of the world at least (most airports in my country have a rule to only start APU 5 min before pushback), you can get some relaxation of this rule if you call the ramp supervisor on the ground/tower freq in an amicable way requesting clearance to start the APU outside of the allotted time because of excessive cabin temps. I might even throw "some pax are complaining" in there too, to try and get a little sympathy. Hasn't failed so far. Ahhh... the unmentioned treats of Latin America
Someone mentioned not to wait until you in your comfy cockpit feel uncomfortable because then it's too late for the folks in the back. I think that is the best single piece of advise in this whole thread. Some of our kind can be a little too much over ourselves and only think of the cabin temps whenever it's uncomfortable for them