united airbus brake fans?
 

Does united have the brake fan option on their airbus aircraft?

nope! too cheap

united airbus brake fans?
 

Do they use ground fans to cool the brakes on quick turns?

Yep,

They have portable fans on the ramp.

united airbus brake fans?
 

We have them at JetBlue and I feel we put a lot of emphasis on them .. More than needed these things have been flying for years without them. Also I heard we take a pretty good size weight penalty cause of them... Delta doesn't have them either .

I understand that there is a lot of weight on 4 wheel/tire assemblies which naturally heats up the brakes, but how is it any different from a 737? Particularly one of the bigger 737s like a -900ER? I'm just curious why Boeing doesn't have this option.

When I flew the Bus, I was told it was more about the weight penalty than cost (2000 lbs sound right?).

Normally NBD. But one Autumn afternoon, did an ORD-Indy-ORD turn. Brakes were pretty warm at the gate. For reasons I've forgotten, we had to taxi almost two miles to takeoff.

The brakes were just under the limit when we rolled. Capt kept the gear down for about 30 seconds after liftoff. Gear up, checked them, starting to cool off. Just as we level off, BONG! ECAM for hot brakes.

Slowed down and dropped the gear. We were about FL200. I figured in a 200+ kt slipstream that was below freezing, a minute or two would do it.

Nope. Had the gear down all the way to Chicago. I was amazed.

The weight/cost penalty is not worth it unless you're constantly doing quick turns at airports which need a lot of braking action. Home Depot fans add zero weight and cost about 1/1000 of what an installed cooling system does.

This definitely seems to be a flaw with the 320. Having only flown the A320 in larger transport, are most larger transport category aircraft the same when it comes to the brakes?

Don't know about other carriers, but we used to use 'Home Depot' caliber fans on the ramp for cooling. Last year, the FAA and Airbus put an end to that. New fans had to be custom built to comply. So yeah, the weight savings is real but I don't imagine they cost as little as the 'Home Depot' variety.