Originally Posted by
NuGuy
Heyas F4H.
Right you are.
It's like the single engine taxi thing. Now I'm all on board with that, BUT, there needs to be more SA going on with it. DTW ain't ATL...you don't have 2 minutes behind every airplane because each one is a heavy or a 757....the departure line moves pretty quick. When you taxi out to 22L in the morning, you're going to get right out, and 3 minutes is the minimum (on the 757), not the goal. If you crank up at the gate and taxi out to 22L, that's just about 5 minutes.
On the -9, in the dead of summer, you need to engage. Open all of the overhead cockpit vents (yea, I know they're noisy), and run the APU. If the ground air is weak, run the APU and write up the ground air. If you let the cabin get hot, you're done, especially with the loads and short legs. The -30s were a bit better (-10s were the best), but you need to use what you got.
As I said, you need SA....
Nu
There are always experiences of lack of SA.
I was on a 757 a couple months back DTW-ATL and we 2 engine taxiied out to deice. We subsequently sat in line waiting for deice for 30 minutes. Then, apparently one of the doors wasn't closed fully. Thanks to our wonderful FA's of unspecified origin
(and pilots that wouldn't push the issue), the FA's wouldn't touch the door, so we then taxiied back to the ramp with both engines still running so mx could come out with a lift truck to jiggle the door handle. That took another 30 minutes. Absolutely embarrassing.
Oh, since we were so late, we rolled around ATL for 25 minutes waiting for a gate still... of course with all engines running. The only thing keeping me sane was the fact that I was making $1.66 a minute for their stupidity. Unfortunately all the pax around me didn't have the same motivation.
There is common sense and then there is a complete lack of it.