EK775 today...
 

So today was rather interesting... Decided to share because I can't sleep with the jet lag anyway.

Boarded EK775 with the other Gold Y passengers onto this ancient dinosaur of a 777. FA's seemed OK. Nothing special. Seats the old Y. I settle down.

20 minutes later in the boiling aircraft, a lady has a medical emergency. She is to be offloaded. Aircraft at this stage is unbearably hot. Y is full and passengers are really sweating. FA's say the delay could be about 20 minutes more now while they offload the bags. People swear. 50 minutes later, just before more people pass out, they do a small drinks round. We take off about an hour late...

I know it's not EKs fault for the emergency, but wow, sitting in that sauna of an aircraft was not fun.

Anyone know why they couldn't turn on the AC on the ground? It would certainly have made that hour long wait more bearable...

I hope the lady who was offloaded is doing well.

I've been in the A380 to Paris and they couldn't or didn't turn on AC in C either. Same situation with medical emergency. I'm curious too.

The aircraft's APU might not have been working so the A/C could only run while the engines are on.

Usually groundhandlers have external A/C units to provide cool air to such aircrafts but they obviously didn't use one in this instance. Could've been broken or being used by other airlines.

The same thing just happened to me on EK380. The captain explained that the APU was being serviced, so we were running on an external A/C unit. It was still swelteringly hot though.

Was it at a remote stand? I had a similar situation last year with a A380 on a remote stand. It was unpleasant, especially at the height of Dubai summer... - I suppose it is one of those hazards of transit in the Gulf though. I'm not sure it's a matter of choice, I think 100% of the times when ground a/c is available, they turn it on!

Just out of curiosity, what is the added value of this
in your story ?



Anyway, I had a similar experience on a A388 out of HKG September last year, but, the captain clearly announced that the A/C was not working on the ground.

You cannot fly with a missing ashtray, but, you can fly with a failing APU unit ? :confused::confused:

It was B32.

You'd think they could plug these things into the ground power properly!

In fact given EKs leverage with aircraft and engine manufacturers with respect to engineering solutions for hot weather conditions, you would think they could task them with finding a way to power cabin a/c from ground power as a critical system!

Me too A380 ex HKG. Had to have a water with my PDB!

I said it to imply that I was one of the first on the plane, so I was in the heat for quite a while longer then some others.

Now that I read it like that it seems like a DYKWIA moment. Wasn't meant to be. Anyway.

Hopefully EK can find a way around this because it certainly made for quite an uncomfortable flight. In hindsight, the crew handled the disgruntled passengers well, so props to them especially considering that they were in the boiling aircraft with us and were probably also overheating.

Ground power units (GPU) do not provide enough power to power an aircraft's air conditioning system. This can only be achieved by an external air conditioning unit.

If it's way too hot sometimes the external AC units cannot cool aircrafts well enough especially when aircrafts are being serviced by catering trucks causing many doors to be open.

Didn't a similar thing happen in Ultimate Airport Dubai?

A 777 had a messed up APU and the AC didn't work, they tried ground power but it wasn't working quick enough, only then did they connect External AC units.

When being bussed round what felt like the whole of DXB the other week all of the EK planes at concourse stands had two large diameter corrugated pipes running to the base of the fuselage that I assumed were for A/C. If this is what they are do they need to be disconnected fairly early in the preperations for departure and is it not practicable to reconnect them in circumstances such as the OP describes?

Ultimate airport , the narrator explained how the ground power unit air started the aircraft, i dont know who the technical consultant is but "the air pushes the piston down in the cylinder and starts the engine" had me rolling around in laughter.