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Old Sep 4, 2009, 6:21 PM
PHXFlyer PHXFlyer is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,366
Default RE: Your Title

Quote:
No air conditioning on flight 4558 requires plane to fly dangerously low!
I'm not sure what one, flying "dangerously low", has to do with the other, no AC.

At altitude the cabin is cooled by outside air which is pressurized and circulated through the cabin. According to FlightAware and FlightStats your flight pushed back only 5 minutes late @3:16 PM and was "wheels up" @3:30 PM so you spent less than 15 minutes taxiing and were probably at an altitude where the temperature started to cool down shortly thereafter. As for the temperature on the ground, in order to cool the plane either the aircraft's APU has to be started or the plane has to be connected to an APU on a ground unit. Either burns fuel and my guess is that since your flight was going to be reasonably on-time they opted not to burn the fuel since you would be airborn shortly. I agree it's not the most customer friendly policy but take it from someone who lives where it's sometimes 115+ in the Summer 90 degrees for 15-30 minutes isn't "intolerable."

As for the "low" cruising altitude as was pointed out before there could have been many reasons for this but flying at lower altitudes is not, in and of itself, unsafe. According to FlightAware your maximum cruising altitude was 24,000 feet. While that may not be as high as they normally fly that particular aircraft, the CRJ 200, nor is it anywhere near that aircraft's maximum operating altitude of 41,000 ft., it may have simply been because the flight from SLC to Kalispell is only just over an hour so climbing to a higher altitude would just have wasted time and fuel.

Sorry to hear about your bags but the temperature most likely was a factor there too. Higher temperatures require longer rolls down the runway in order to get airborne. It's just plain and simple physics. It was probably determined that if they carried more bags they would have to add more fuel and both add to the weight of the aircraft. As the outside temperature goes up the maximum takeoff weight of the aircraft goes down. At some point they had to make a decision to remove weight. That can be done in two ways. Remove bags or remove passengers. That's why your other family members' bags were on your flight. They were trying to clear the backlog. I'm guessing that since nothing more was said about your bags that they were delivered to you in a reasonable amount of time after you arrived in Kalispell.

I'd love to hear Delta's reply to your "formal complaint" but, honestly, I really think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. To say that "Delta compromised the health and safety of their passengers" is really a stretch.

Good luck to you!