Originally Posted by
velosnow
Out of curiosity I've heard a lot of UAL aircraft in DEN talking to ramp about APU use when coming into the ramp. It seems ramp/ops dictates whether or not the APU should be used. Has that decision been taken out of your hands? I heard a guy being a bit unprofessional the other day on the radio about not being plugged in but also wouldn't fire up the APU? Was that him being meek or making a point perhaps?
Thought that particular case was odd, as a UAX guy we run our APU as needed without external folks telling us how to keep our pax comfy.
Th DEN guys can chime in with the latest, but certain gates have been using a procedure to get ground power plugged in very quickly upon arrival so that the APU doesn't need to be started as it normally is. The ramp controller may have been talking to an aircraft inbound to one of those gates. And yes, we can start the APU whenever we feel the need.
As a side note, 9 years of riding RJ jumpseats made it obvious to me that none of the UAX carriers cared much about fuel burn when UAL was buying the fuel. Hopefully that is changing.
As far as your opinion of the guy being unprofessional? Perhaps you wouldn't be frustrated with the predictable results of this while others would:
United Has an Operational Problem in Denver | The Cranky Flier