Originally Posted by
fishforfun
You learn a lot sitting in the back NOT in uniform as a commuter. I try to take those experiences and avoid them when I’m actually working. Even if power and air are hooked up I won’t turn off the APU until there are less than 10 pax left.
I came to an aircraft at an outstation, and not a small one, that the APU has been running all night. In one night this outstation erased my lifetime of diligent APU usage. That was the end for me. We wrote it up, spoke with maintenance and pushed it as far as we could. Just got the deer in the headlights look.
In the winter, some of the northern tier domestic locations have the APU running on multiple aircraft all night long. My record was GRR with 4 aircraft with an overnight low above 20.