I was recently on a flight and the cabin temperature was soaring - I had a small thermometer on board and we were into about 26c on board which was quite uncomfortable - fortunately it was short flight. Question is who controls the temperature is it the guys at the front or the flight attendants?

It is usually the first officer who twists the knob. It is usually the flight attendant working the forward cabin who says turn it up or turn it down.

Couple of problems with this:

While climbing to altitude, the f/a's put on their serving smocks and unlatch the five hundred pound serving carts and drag them up the aisle. They deal drinks and snacks off the arm furiously for half an hour. When that round of service is done they retire to the galley, next to the less-insulated cabin doors, take off their serving smocks and sit down - in their sweaty blouses in the cold and draft. (sorry - I was having a moment there!) Predictably, in a couple of minutes they are going to ring us and say it is cold back there.

You are toasty, they are cold. What a surprise!

If I want a cup of coffee on any given leg for the rest of this four-day trip I will turn the temperature up, even though I know those of you who do not have a PILOT CALL button are already warm.

The other thing is many senior flight attendants think they have more system knowledge than they do and try to tell the pilots specifically what to do with the controls. Instead of saying "It is hot!" or "It is cold!" they sometimes use all manner of phraseology that communicates nothing to me. For example "Turn up the packs." or "Turn up the air!" What do they mean?

If I "turn up" the packs I'd assume I increase the temperature. They might have wanted more airflow - something I cannot always directly control. My real favorite though is "It is hot in mid-cabin and cold at both ends." Now I have one controller for the entire cabin. What am I supposed to do with that?

A good f/o will get to know how to operate the heating/cooling so that no one ever needs to call. On some you can do it with temperature gauges and on some it is valve position indicators that give you the most useful information.

A-320 series was the easiest I ever used. BAe-146 was the worst. If you didn't very carefully bring the packs up to temperature on the first startup they would vaporize the carcinogenic synthetic turbine oil and pump the cabin full of it. The Brits (If you've ever driven a British car you know how the Brits do not value creature comforts!) said just to set the knobs at twelve o'clock and forget about them. If you did that the boarding passengers would mutiny because their eyes were smarting and they thought the plane was on fire. Spoiled Americans!

I don't think the E-jets qualify as "large aircraft", but they have an option on them: the F/O might control temperature or he/she might leave it to the cabin crew, by just turning the cockpit knob to maximum cold (there's a 'click'). The control is then available through the F/A panels. I don't know how the operators are using it, though...

This is interesting, I just have to know which door to knock on to get it sorted. I am of the opinion that certain crew put the temperature up on holiday flights leaving well known resorts on a night flight with fa ull load of passengers suffering from alcohol mismangement in order to send them to sleep.......but that is purely rumour....  

My only experience with aircraft environmental control systems in the Airbus A320 that has three temperature controls for the cockpit, forward cabin and aft cabin. Simply twist the knob clockwise to make it hotter and counterclockwise for colder. The temperature changes are felt pretty quickly.

Quoting HiFi (Reply 2): I don't know how the operators are using it, though...

HiFi-

Most of the Embraer's at work are in the Flight Attendent controlled position.

Quoting Julesmusician (Reply 3): This is interesting, I just have to know which door to knock on to get it sorted. I am of the opinion that certain crew put the temperature up on holiday flights leaving well known resorts on a night flight with fa ull load of passengers suffering from alcohol mismangement in order to send them to sleep.......but that is purely rumour....

This might be a rumor too . . .

A flight school classmate of mine flew for a VIP flight detachment. There was a scheduling mixup and two parties were assigned the same airplane. One was the vice president of an Asian nation with his toadies and the other was a well-known (especially in Vietnam) entertainer and her roadies. Neither party wanted to share a plane with the other unworthies and both had to leave some people behind so all were cranky.

He ran a high cabin altitude and a high temperature and the problem was solved after a few minutes. Everyone fell asleep.

Quoting SlamClick (Reply 1): If I "turn up" the packs I'd assume I increase the temperature. They might have wanted more airflow - something I cannot always directly control. My real favorite though is "It is hot in mid-cabin and cold at both ends." Now I have one controller for the entire cabin. What am I supposed to do with that?

Welcome to the MD-80...

Quoting Julesmusician (Reply 3): This is interesting, I just have to know which door to knock on to get it sorted. I am of the opinion that certain crew put the temperature up on holiday flights leaving well known resorts on a night flight with fa ull load of passengers suffering from alcohol mismangement in order to send them to sleep.......but that is purely rumour...

LOL! Well on the whole I prefer too cold to too hot. It's easy to put on an extra layer. I've also noticed that AA 777 crews set the control to "slightly cooler than comfortable" when taking off and expecting bumps. I asked an F/A about it and he says we might be cold but it beats the projectile vomit flying around the cabin 

Quoting Julesmusician (Thread starter): Question is who controls the temperature is it the guys at the front or the flight attendants?

The RH side ovhd panel,So 1st Officer access to it controls the Zone Temperature of Cockpit & Cabins [Zonewise].

On some Aircraft.The F/A has access to the Zone Temperature controller for the Pax Cabins Zonewise.

regds
MEL

On the 744, there is a master control in the cockpit. To be honest, no one ever touches it at all. And it's generally set at the 22-24C temp.

Down on the main deck there is another control the flight attendants have to then refine the temp to their desire. Normally on the 747, all models, on a full flight 22-24C works out just about right, and on lightly loaded flights, 26C seems to do just fine.

Quoting PhilSquares (Reply 9): Down on the main deck there is another control the flight attendants have to then refine the temp to their desire. Normally on the 747, all models, on a full flight 22-24C works out just about right, and on lightly loaded flights, 26C seems to do just fine.

Is the cooler temperature set on full flights to cater to the Body heat of Pax.
regds
MEL

I've also heard of a DC-8 operated by a non-sked that had a regular house thermostat screwed to a bulkhead in the forward galley. It wasn't connected to anything but the flight attendants seemed satisfied whenever they adjusted it. The pilots called it the "placebo stat."

Every airliner I've flown, with one exception, the FE or FO normally control cabin temps. The exception? DC-10 with Lower Lobe Galley. On that particular model plane, the FE's temp control knob for the LLG included a position that allowed "remote" control from the LLG itself.

The option to have the FA control the cabin temp on the ERJs is nice. It really cuts down on one of our primary cruise flight tasks! Our company always runs it in the FA-controlling position.

When we got the first ERJs, though, the FAs weren't all really used to the relative "sophistication" of the jets. There were a few who thought that the temperature control had only two positions: hot or cold. So for a while crews would still get calls from the back: "It's either way too hot or freezing - what's wrong with this airplane?" After it was tactfully suggested a few times that they try placing the switch somewhere between hot and cold the problem disappeared.

I honestly wonder why more aircraft don't have that option. It makes sense - the FAs know what the weather's like back there a lot better than we do.

Quoting SlamClick (Reply 11): I've also heard of a DC-8 operated by a non-sked that had a regular house thermostat screwed to a bulkhead in the forward galley. It wasn't connected to anything but the flight attendants seemed satisfied whenever they adjusted it. The pilots called it the "placebo stat."

IMHO this is a good idea for the home as well 

SlamClick wrote:

I've also heard of a DC-8 operated by a non-sked that had a regular house thermostat screwed to a bulkhead in the forward galley. It wasn't connected to anything but the flight attendants seemed satisfied whenever they adjusted it. The pilots called it the "placebo stat."

The 747 classics on Pan-Am had this as well!

Hello: Arbys: Master Temp Control on Cockpit and "Main Purser" got another control on their Panel which allow to deviate +/- 5 C from Cockpit Selection.
( Many of FA seek for Cold Temp after dinner for Paxs/ to go sleep and do not disturbed to much)
RGDS

Apprentice wrote:

Hello: Arbys: Master Temp Control on Cockpit and "Main Purser" got another control on their Panel which allow to deviate +/- 5 C from Cockpit Selection.
( Many of FA seek for Cold Temp after dinner for Paxs/ to go sleep and do not disturbed to much)
RGDS

It depends.

On the 330, the cabin temperature knob on the overhead sets the general cabin temperature, and the cabin crew can set individual zones within 2C of that selection. On the 350 there's an additional "purser select" setting on the knob, allowing cabin crew to set the zones in the full range. We typically leave it in purser select.

The cockpit temperature knob sets the cockpit temperature.

Q: Who Controls?
A: Sadistic nazis, based on evidence of sitting on thousands of airplane cabins

Really. So many times the temperatures are way off. You have a widebody with the main cabin, 80% of the occupants dressed in their jackets *and* covered by blankets, I'm still cold, and I presume others are too. And yet, if you ask the crew if they could increase the temperature a tiny bit, they go like "why" or "no one else has complained".

Or the reverse, too hot. That happens less often though.

Well, there's a comfortable temperature on most of my flights, so the crews do get this right mostly. But, if say one quarter or one fifth of my long-distance flights have an uncomfortable temperature, that's still a bit odd. Could be me of course, but see above for apparent reactions of the other passengers.

(But thanks for the interesting and informative discussion, SlamClick and all. Although... 12 years ago... what a thread resurrection!)

I think it also has something to do with the cabin crew who control it / feed it back to the pilots. They are the ones working, serving warm drinks, using the ovens etc. Of course they are warmer than someone who is sitting down, not doing much! You will see the same thing happen at an office, where the sat down people get cold working on a computer and the cleaner sweats his/hers hat off!

Well, since this zombie thread has risen from its dusty grave, I might as well add that some airplanes automatically adjust the cabin temperature up a couple of degrees from the purser's or pilot's selection after a couple of hours in the air to compensate for the decreased humidity.

The purser will also tend to select a lower temperature in the forward zone where premium punters are sleeping under thick duvets, while they would normally keep it warmer in the back so that the annoying self-loading freight will stop asking for blankets as there aren't enough anyway...


It's a personal observation, but I find that cabin crew on airlines based in warmer latitudes will tend to set a higher temperature than their counterparts from airlines further up north...

Sometimes it depends on the plane type and how they're laid out. I try to avoid seats on 737s next to the AC ducts in the winter, because those zones get hotter than the rest of the cabin.

This 12 year old thread makes me miss Philsquare, Slamclick and Hawk. Back when this site was great. For a second I thought they were all back, but then realized it was a zombie thread.

Luckily Starlionblue is still here. One of the last greats still around.

The hottest zone on a 747 calls for the coolest air, and then each zone controller can add hot air as required.

SuseJ772 wrote:

This 12 year old thread makes me miss Philsquare, Slamclick and Hawk. Back when this site was great. For a second I thought they were all back, but then realized it was a zombie thread.

Luckily Starlionblue is still here. One of the last greats still around.

So nice of you to say. But I am not in the same leagues as those guys.

12 years ago I was just a wannabe. Today I can at least see where those guys were coming from. Long way to go.

Ah, I too remember those names when I was just learning to fly!

For anyone interested: The NZ A320 (domestic) have a touch screen at the front of the cabin which the flight attendants can adjust the desired temperature on. At the moment I'm flying a Q300. There are temperature knobs, and when you twist them it looks like you're controlling the temperature. In reality, you're not, you're just hoping for the best.