FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Emergency Exit Lights have 30 Minute Lifetime?

Jan 23, 2007 | 3:40 am

#13

Steve M

Join Date: May 2000

Location: Houston, TX, USA

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Quote:

Originally Posted by LarryJ

Yes, 30 minutes is the standard for the emergency lighting. When they are depleted the emergency light battery must be replaced.

The GPU cable coming out does not cause a short, it depowers the airplane. With the loss of ground power you would manually have to switch over to APU power. If you're on ground power the APU would not have likely been running so it would have to be started first then connected to power the aircraft.

So why didn't they just start the APU when the GPU cable fell out? Presumably they were aware that they had lost GPU. I know that AA is pretty militant about not running the APU while at the gate these days, but wouldn't premature loss of GPU be reason enough to do so, especially considering the alternative? Perhaps the APU was inop?

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