As an F.O., one of the first things I do is walk the cabin when I get on to check the temperature. If the temperature is inadequate, I try to correct the situation by working with the ground crew to fix the ground air. If the ground air is broken, we have an 800 number we can call to give the gate number of the broken air unit. They'll send somebody out to repair it, and they're pretty dang good about it! Once we start boarding, if the flight attendants start complaining about the temp, we don't hesitate to start the APU. Passenger comfort comes first then fuel savings. But if there's a way to keep the pax comfortable without using the APU, we obviously use that first.

At Skywest, it was different. Very few of the gates had ground air and those that did were barely ever used. Skywest was pretty dang good about hooking up power, though. The United ground crews in Chicago were horrible about hooking up power and sometimes the GPU's didn't even work. But that's United for you. Delta ground crews are RELIGIOUS about hooking up power and air. In CVG and ATL, they hook up the ground power before we can even get the seat belt sign off! It's a huge change from DCI.