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Horizon's killing babies now.....

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English said:
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.
 
dispatcher121 said:
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
 
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.
 
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
 
igneousy2 said:
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.
 
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.
 
RJP said:
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?
 
Last edited:
slatsnfive said:
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.
 
dispatcher121 said:
English said:
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.
 

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