Speaking of APU, Finished a trip a few days ago and saw the plane was going to Texas in 52 minutes. Kept the APU running until the last pax was off. Went to the jetway and saw no crew. Okay I have a commute back east to catch. Turned off the APU and did secured the plane with the batts and emergency lights. As I’m taking my bags off the plane, CA pops in and said “Aww you shut down the APU?” I’m not going on a wild goose chase to look for the other crew. If you want the APU to stay running, get down a bit earlier. I have no problem leaving it running and even popping my head out to check but that’s about as far as I go. I just told the guy sorry I have a commute to catch and didn’t see anyone. Then I peaced out.

I never leave the gate with less fuel than planned. And if it looks like I'm going to, I'll call the fueler back out. And as I mentioned, I always single engine taxi (unless the FOM specifically says not to). And 95% of the time there's no problem with the fuel plan in the real world. It's that 5% that can sometimes be a pain (and usually I'm terrible at guessing when it'll happen). I've had plenty of times when I thought there might be a delay and instead we get a shortcut and we land 800 lbs above planned.

Keep in mind that ever since I became the one signing for the release on flights I've operated, I've never landed below minimum fuel (or even terribly close to it). I'm one of those guys that if we're anything below planned my mind immediately starts forming plan B in case things go further outside of "planned" and it's difficult to bore my FO to death with stories when I'm coming up with that plan B. ;)

My philosophy is that the dispatcher also shares joint responsibility for the flight and if things start looking dicey, I'll talk to them about other things, and if we divert, we divert (that's never happened to me either, at least for lack of fuel). And hypothetically, if I did divert for lack of fuel and for whatever reason some investigation was made into why we diverted for lack of fuel, I'd fully expect to have a dispatcher who is using good historical data about the fuel loads for that flight (that theu have access to that I don't) for why they planned the fuel the way they did.

My point is that if you are able to save some fuel at the gate by not running the APU the moment you set foot on the airplane (assuming there's ground power and the cabin is a comfortable temperature) I like to hold off on starting the APU until about D-15 or so. Otherwise, light that baby up! And if it's already running when I set foot on the plane after the last crew, I'm going to leave it running. No way I'm risking it not starting when I try to start it after shutting it down. Then the flight gets delayed and I look like an idiot. Not sure which one is worse. ;)

exactly. I do this: the last passenger leaves, I follow them out and peak up the jet bridge. If I don’t see happy compass people skipping down the apu is coming off. Sorry.

You're putting wayyyyy too much faith in the dispatchers man. They don't even look at what they're putting out half of the time, several in particular. And in flight good luck getting more than a "copy." out of them while they're working on 14 other flights. My philosophy is simple: Clear, vmc and a million? Yeah give me nothing extra. Lots of nearby good diversion airports? That's fine. SLC has some thundershowers but they're a full 30nm east of the field but you didn't give me anything cause "the TAF is only calling for light rain showers with cumulonimbus in the vicinity".... yeah I'm gonna have to ask you to get the fueler back out here because their TAFs are horoscopes with numbers.

But yeah if the cabin is really a comfortable temperature and we aren't boarding yet, I wait, obviously... people heat it up quick, though, depending on ambient temp.

Damn I haven’t had time to read all these APU posts in full, but I’ll say I run that bish.

Passenger and crew comfort is key!! I tell the fa “I’m not stingy with the APU, I’ll fire it up as soon as it’s slightly warm”

I run it. I single engine taxi. Haven’t had the APU cause a fuel issue. Even if you’re a little below planned on takeoff it’s no big deal.
If you’re close to min there’s probably something other than running the APU for 30minutes that got you there (maybe stingy amount of total fuel).

Plus we are usually over fueled by 200lbs

I rarely single engine taxi when leaving lax. Never had a fuel issue because of it. Or because I left the apu spinning on a 50 minute turn.

Generally, either one will tell you within the first 5 minutes of talking with them.

“Do you know when Ivars closes in SEA, last time I had it was on break from UND”

“I haven’t seen this much sun since I was in Daytona, did I tell you I went to Riddle yet?”

Exactly. Passenger comfort comes first when it comes to the APU.

I power up the APU once I get onboard and leave it on during turns, always two-engine taxi, and still manage to land with 3-4000# just about every single time. On FFODs I don’t even mess with GPUs and just start on batteries and APU. I also leave it running if I step off to get food, INT’L crew swaps, or if the next crew is bound to arrive any moment. Everyone has a different opinion.

Gotta love 5 leg days that have absolutely nothing but quick turns that allow no time for the crew to get food. Guess who's taking a flight ops delay for that tomorrow?