DC8 had a long pole they would attach to the aft fuselage.

The problem is these days who can tell the difference between a -8 and -9 from the outside. Training and discipline!

The APU and a hot cabin is huge! Why do you narrow body pilots make us suffer for a few cups of fuel!

BTW the 747-400, "whale" can get really hot when the maintenance personnel forget to start the APU and use ground air. Only the APU and packs can keep it cool or at least not at German sauna temps.

It is really station and airplane dependent with the ground air and 737. I have been in a -900ER in FL summertime and the ground air has been like a icebox, and I've been in a -700 where ground air can't keep up in Chicago in the fall.

I always ask the flight attendants to let me know if the back gets hot. If anyone is uncomfortable (including me) I fire up the APU.

I have under a year on the line and I usually switch the bleeds during my parking flow but most captains will see ground power and the APU will get shut down in the same thought. It is almost muscle memory now for every captain I fly with. I might say something and the response is usually "they are usually pretty good about ground air here." I am afraid if we continue to leave people on hot airplanes with bad or no ground air they will start requiring us to stay until the last passenger is off.

Thanks for advocating and please continue to do so.

Unless it's really hot out, the problem is usually not so much after parking but during boarding. I ride on a LOT of Guppies on the commute and it's rare to swelter during de-planing in my experience. But in the hour it sits on the ground, the thing heats up like a ***** in church. The same ground air that cools the A320 so well is absolutely lame on the Guppy for some reason.

If you're concerned about having to stay with the jet until the last passenger leaves, you need to also remember that it takes a couple of minutes after you shut off the APU bleed air for the APU to shut down, so don't go killing the battery switch on termination until it's completely finished it's shut down cycle. Therefore, if you're running the APU bleed after parking just be aware you're going to need to sit with the plane for awhile before you bail on a termination flight. If it's hot, it's hot and you need to do what you need to do to keep things comfortable back there. Just requires a little more time.

We can't leave the 737 APU on unattended?

At a MX station yes, but outstation overnight with no mechanics, we are supposed to terminate it IIRC.

Ual "south" huh? Well I have sweat my a$$ of in quite a few "north" aircraft also, and plenty of "north" captains on the 73 also. But glad to see you are moving forward with the rest of us...:rolleyes:

Why are you even responding to him? Don't feed the trolls.

We really need to get past the divisive crap.