Originally Posted by
BizFlyin
Let's do a bit of critical thinking. It's -50 outside. Does one need to heat the cabin, or cool the cabin?
Yes, lets do some critical thinking. If an airliner could simply transfer the frigid air that is outside the cabin when at cruising altitude to cool the inside of the cabin, then aircraft would not need multiple sophisticated a/c systems.
Perhaps the below linked governmental paper entitled "A Review of Aircraft Cabin Conditioning for Operations in Australia" could shed some light as to just how complicated those systems are and how much fuel they consume.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a109044.pdf