411A: I had begun to taxi that hot and humid plane back to the gate. The Station Manager would have written me up for it, but because the rampers had not plugged in the cooling hose when the plane first arrived-maybe due to a lack of leadership or the Station Mgr. did not want to lease an extra tug from another airline (cost factors?)-I was willing to take that chance. And I will continue to use my limited authority in the future, as necessary, even before the passenger boarding takes place (as happened in CLT last week), whether to delay boarding or to increase the Dispatch fuel load etc (our company now allows lower vis. before an alternate airport is required. Why?..the high cost of fuel).
As Captain, I refuse to allow the company's lack of leadership and indifference towards its passengers (costs are priority) and staff, to erode passenger and crew comfort to unacceptable levels, and am willing to face the consequences. The folks on the Airbus and 757 with the better air output and recirc. fans have fewer problems-unless the APU air is on MEL and the ground crew yanks out the cooling hose long before the engine start cart is ready. This almost happened to us three days ago and as it is fairly uncommon, even the experienced ground crew were a bit confused about how to coordinate all of this, but after opening the escape window and clarifying the need for close coordination (no carts full of last minute bags to be loaded etc), did a really good job.
When both engines and the APU can not cool a plane, there is a real problem and I will find a solution-whatever it takes.
How about the other Captains in PpruneLand?
My company's indifference and $elf-centered
goals are directly reflected by the ranking in the "JD Power" Business surveys, if you can describe it as "ranking". As the pretty, junge blond lady says in one of the three "Unpimp your Auto" VW ads on the Internet, "It's definitely Sucking". Jaaa...
JonDC9: The highly-motivated Chief Pilot, the friendliest and best one I've ever encountered or heard about, is at our (by far) smallest hub and crew base. He called my FO's cell phone at another hub to thank me for volunteering to fly an extra turn-around at the end of a previous trip, unfortunately for which no available FO was found, whether as a block-holder or reserve. Our previous Chief Pilot was alright, but his main focus was on whether pilots wore their hats etc. One of our FOs, a retired Air Force guy, noticed how this crewbase did a much higher share of weekend flying, and told the former Chief Pilot to get his head out of his a&&, or words to that effect.