Horizon's killing babies now.....

[turbodriver]

http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2005/0722/local/stories/01local.htm

(I just happened to have a copy of this magazine handy)

"While our 70-seat CRJ-700 regional jets and Q400 high-speed turboprops are equipped with auxiliary power units that keep our planes cool on the ground and in the air, our stalwart 37-seat Q200s lack the equipment necessary to condition the air while on the ground. To address this, our maintenance teams implemented modifications to our air-circulation system that significantly increased the efficiency of our ground cooling fans. Then, working with our customer-service teams, they were able to identify a mobile air-conditioning unit that, with minor modification, allows us to pour cool air into the Q200’s passenger compartment for added comfort."

Jeff Pinneo, CEO, June 2004

So much comfort a baby almost dies from heat exhaustion. What an airline.

So, el-cheapo Jeff doesn't want any APU's in his dash 8-200 huh? Till someone dies that is. I even heard from a buddy that an internal memo exists that told pilots that the exteral A/C they use on this aircraft wasn't availiable for all flights and that about half the time, people just had to suffer in the heat. I'm sure the media would love to get a copy of that memo. I also heard that the ramp supervisiors in SEA were telling rampers not to attach the A/C to the aircraft becasue they were short staffed and on time performance was more important than the well being of customers. Can anybody confirm this?

This could be any one of our kids.

 

[RJP]

Ygtbsm

Ground A/C cart didn't work? The DHC-8-200 wasn't cool enough at 19k in cruise? You should have to come spend a couple days in Hawaii sitting in the cockpit of one of our splendid DHC-8-100s. How about 829? It won't quite make 110 degrees but, what the heck, it's a moist heat!

The -200 was the greatest thing we'd ever seen at WP and they're complaining it was too hot. No wonder you guys at Horizon get paid so much. Must be to make up for all the inferior equipment and broken ground A/C carts.

Frigging pansies.

 

[QXbuzzard]

Let me guess, you didn't pass the interview at horizon, so you mock us now. If you're willing to work for such little money, then you deserve to live in your car.


By the way, 90% of us don't get paid that much, only the RJ captains. Our contract is based only on career RJ pilots.

 

[91100 100 set]

. Our contract is based only on career RJ pilots.

Alot of that going around...

 

[LT. Dangle]

Let me guess, you didn't pass the interview at horizon, so you mock us now. If you're willing to work for such little money, then you deserve to live in your car.


Amen to that

 

[RJP]

Dude, chill (pun intended). You guys are a little sensitive. I have no idea how much your CRJ guys make but the DHC-8 is still higher than WP. Point is that at WP we'd take your "hot" 200s in a heartbeat. Hell, we'll even trade for the 100s you sold us.

 

[turbodriver]

I was working in dispatch that night. I just talked to the dispatcher who had that flight. The Captain diverted the flight as a courtesy because the parents were freaking. The child fell asleep from the heat...which is normal for a child of that age. (Keeping in mind that they began their day in LAS.) The child never required any further medical attention nor hospitalization.​

Yes the a/c was hot due to the temps the POAT was 29C and it was a "full boat". The aircraft DOES get pretty hot when it is full...but NOT 110F. There were no MEL deferments on the aircraft regarding the gasper vents. All were working.

As far as the "air carts" go, Horizon is the ONLY carrier who offers cool air for the flights on the ground in aircraft that are not equipped with APU's (Note: It's not possible to equip a DH8B with an APU). This equipment is new and they are still working out the "bugs". Some stations don't have enough "air carts" to accommodate all their traffic....yet.

Side note: Just as the pilot's contract is based on senior CRJ Captains, so is the DX contract based on senior (10+ years) dispatchers. (We make less than FO's.)

Do you work for McSkinning on the side?

 

[Sig]

(Note: It's not possible to equip a DH8B with an APU).

HAHAHH!!! Just reread the post.

Ooops. Bad Sig.

 

[P-Dawg_QX]

Do you work for McSkinning on the side?

First of all, quit being a dick.

Second of all, being that you have "lots" of aircraft experience and ratings, and at least 5000 hours of flight time, you should know better than to take the media's report of any incident involving an airplane as factual information.

No, it didn't help that we had a complete moron (McSkimming) making statements for the company, but that's beside the point.

 

[English]

As far as the "air carts" go, Horizon is the ONLY carrier who offers cool air for the flights on the ground in aircraft that are not equipped with APU's (Note: It's not possible to equip a DH8B with an APU).

Horizon is not the ONLY carrier that uses air carts for cooling. Eagle uses them for their Saabs. I'm sure other carriers do as well.

 

[RJP]

Horizon is not the ONLY carrier that uses air carts for cooling. Eagle uses them for their Saabs. I'm sure other carriers do as well.

Island Air doesn't. And we're stuck in POS -100s.

 

[English]

Hey RJP

SUCK IT UP!

 

[NuGuy]

Note: It's not possible to equip a DH8B with an APU

Are you sure about that? At PDT all of our DHC-8-100s had APUs in them, and all of Mesaba's DHC-8-100s had APUs also.



When the -200s showed up at PDT, the first ones came without APUs, but were later retrofitted with APUs, so it IS possible. You can usually spot these birds as they have a different door/exhaust configuation from the standard -8 setup



As a side note, where we operated the DHC-8, namely Florida and Charlotte, the -100s could be pretty hot up front. There were several configurations of vents, and the very early DHC-8s (like 906HA) had three small vents by your feet. The later -8s had only ONE of these tiny vents, and finally they went to a large gasper + vent.



The -200s had really decent AC up front, but that could have be just because they were new.



Nu

 

[DashTrash400]

Shoulda dumped the fwd outflow valve, woulda cooled things off *and* made the parents quit spazzing that their kid wanted to sleep!

Well, now that Horizon has gotten a bit of discussion thanks to their babykilling ways, back to discussing Pinnacle vs Mesa.

 

[igneousy2]

While I was in Boston a few years ago with Eagle, a crew had a flight attendant faint during the taxi out to 22R (long taxi when you are number 30 for takeoff.) A nonreving fligth attendant called up front to let the crew know. They had to Return to the gate. It was one of those rare 100 degree Boston days. We had a hard time getting the rampers to hook up the aircarts to the airplanes, after the incident...captains began refusing to allow the boarding of aircraft until the airplanes were allowed to cool down. It was difficult because Eagle had just bought out BEX and most of the ramp personelle and Captains were old BEXers and they had gotten along without them for all those years.


The reason that American Eagle and Horizon use aircarts is they (i'm guessing for Horizon) have a good cost analysis system in place. They have realized that the $50,000 acquisition cost on an A/C cart is chump change compared to the extra 15 minutes or more the engines are run on every turn every day. I gurantee you, Eagle does not do anything that an Excel spreadsheet doesn't tell them to.

The reason airlines like Island Air and BEX don't use aircarts is that they balk at the acquisition cost. They don't have the information systems in place to realize that an aircart pays for itself in a year.

Later

 

[Kevski]

The reason airlines like Island Air and BEX don't use aircarts is that they balk at the acquisition cost. They don't have the information systems in place to realize that an aircart pays for itself in a year.

I can only speak for WP, but all our engine maintenance is done by cycles or on condition, so extra ground running time doesn't count. It is pretty bad here (like RJP said), the planes sit on the ramp for 20-30 minutes, full of pax, when it is 90 degrees and 80% humidity. And the old Dash-8s never really cool down on a 20 minute flight @7000ft. Many of our A/C had APUs, but they were removed prior to delivery at the request of the VP of Maint. I doubt we will ever see ground AC units, as the GSE guys wouldn't have a clue how to fix em.

 

[QXbuzzard]

The problem with our 200's and ground A/C carts is that some of our parking spots at PDX use gas powered GPU's which won't work for an A/C unit. Our electric GPU units have the power hookups for them. So some aircraft don't get the opportunity to get the A/C. Also, some planes come in early in the afternoon and are not scheduled to go back out for a few hours, so they sit closed up with no circulation and bake in the sun. Horizon has made many good efforts to figure out how to keep them cool, but sometimes it just doesn't help enough for some people. Most of us can handle a 110 degree cabin temp for a while, but an infant or elderly person may not. Most of our crews are very proactive on getting an A/C unit hooked up right away, but some of the ground personel need a little push to get it done.

 

[slatsnfive]

Dude, chill (pun intended). You guys are a little sensitive. I have no idea how much your CRJ guys make but the DHC-8 is still higher than WP. Point is that at WP we'd take your "hot" 200s in a heartbeat. Hell, we'll even trade for the 100s you sold us.

Yeah man, I saw poeple get off the plane in OGG the other day with sweat rings on the back of their shirts (a/c 806 ). And earlier that day people were just dripping as I looked back when they boarded ( without number 2 running of course ). And Rob said " He wants us to be the better airline not the bigger airline". I dont think flying are customers around in sauna type airplanes is going to make us the "better" airline.

Talked to maintanence after flying and they said they were going to rip out the whole A/C system on 829EX and install a better or new one during the next week, so stay tuned.

Maybe when the big bosses fly on our aircraft we should leave the bleeds and recirc fan off and see how they like it!

Hey RJP, we need to get pro-active on this, what do you suggest?

 

[LearLove]

Talked to maintanence after flying and they said they were going to rip out the whole A/C system on 829EX and install a better or new one during the next week, so stay tuned.

QUOTE]


829ex - thats the dash that took out 5 geese on departure from RWY 35 in PHL back in 1999. One was wedged back thru the leading edge of the left wing all the was thru the spar. Another was speared on the CA's side pitot tube. I think its also the one that mx drove thru the fence in MDT back in 02 or 03.

 

[Ralgha]

Horizon is not the ONLY carrier that uses air carts for cooling. Eagle uses them for their Saabs. I'm sure other carriers do as well.

I should have specified PDX which is where the flight orginated. My bad.

Horizon is also the only carrier AT PDX that has aircraft sans APU.