Passenger boarding without flight crew - what does your airline do ? ....

[airsupport]

As it should be! No seat belts until fuelling completed, pairs of doors guarded by the crew at all times, engineers keeping tabs on the plane, flight attendant close access to evacuation alarm. Sounds like they were doing their job well and able to handle any problems until the pilots turned up. Probably saved a significant delay....

Yes, and as I pointed out earlier on this thread, this was done on a regular basis with no problems at all both here in Australia and right throughout the World with Australian registered Aircraft.

Obviously some Countries/Airlines must have different ways of doing it.

[42psi]

No problems. The engineers have it. If the APU shuts down or there is a fire, automatic discharge of APU fire extinguisher occurs and external alarms ring.

Thanks for that Rainboe .... the airfield where I am these days keeps complaining about this at safety meetings. My previous experience had been that it was OK but then the engineers were always close by. In this case they can be 1/2 mile away on another pier.

Obviously some Countries/Airlines must have different ways of doing it.

Yep, and sometimes it's folks who don't know better or don't really know what the rules are.

I worked for the shamrock for 17.5 years and from memory the the process for pax boarding without flight deck crew and/or while fuelling with pax on board were clearly laid out.

This didn't prevent some "discussion" from time to time with airports/handling agents who objected.

In some cases the airport had rules about not fuelling with pax boarding without "fire cover" ... sometimes that meant simply alerting the fire service and sometimes a fire vehicle at the a/c. But that could vary day to day when someone not sure would just object (often the handling agent) and say it couldn't be done.

Exactly the same for pax boarding without flight deck crew.

[Checkboard]

Actually, if there is a problem detected in the APU, including a fire detection, the APU will shut down automatically and sound the external alarm, but the fire extinguisher can only be fired manually. Someone has to do that from the external panel or the flight deck - on the Boeings at least.

[42psi]

Actually, if there is a problem detected in the APU, including a fire detection, the APU will shut down automatically and sound the external alarm, but the fire extinguisher can only be fired manually. Someone has to do that from the external panel or the flight deck - on the Boeings at least.

Ah... that's interesting .. the fleet mostly involved is 75's and 320/321's, wonder if the Airbus are fully auto?