Cabin Temperatures?

[Ekka]

Maybe impossible for temperature to please everyone on a plane. Even in bed at home I can be hot and my wife can be cold.

You've touched on a factor it has surprised me no one has mentioned, perhaps it's because of PC.

Half the world's population prefers a temperature 2.5 degrees higher than the other half.

 

[Maisy33]

On long hauls I always presumed they turned the heating up to make everyone sleepy, turn off lights and provide less service.

 

[anabolism]

EY and JL are the worst, in my experience, along with the AA A321T trans-con. On EY, JL, CX, and even QR it often gets too hot to sleep. On some planes there are individual air vents and if I open them full, it cools my area down enough. Otherwise I will politely ask a few times for the temperature to be lowered when the plane has been darkened and people are sleeping and if it stays too hot I will resort to sleeping shirtless (in shorts and barefoot, of course) with of course no blanket.

 

[anabolism]

On long hauls I always presumed they turned the heating up to make everyone sleepy, turn off lights and provide less service.

People say that being hot makes people sleepy, but in my experience just the opposite. Being hot makes me agitated and sleepless.

 

[AviatorInsight]

Regardless of the airline we are always hot in J.
On one flight the CSM said that due to the angle of attack of the aircraft heat naturally rose towards the front.
Sounds reasonable.

Um, I'm sorry but that does not seem even remotely reasonable to me. You've been fed bollocks.

 

[jastel]

Even some cars have individual climate controls for driver and passenger, front and back now.
Everybody expects their setting to be the "normal".
I have been hot and cold on different flights.
As said it is easier to get warmer than colder by putting on clothing.
Cant see any easy answer here.

 

[ozzguy]

Last time I flex CX from ADL-HKG the air wasn't even on. We had to keep the window shades down for the whole flight and go scolded at if you dared raised it to look out the window (daytime flight). Everyone was sweating and stuffy on arrival in HKG. Never been more glad to get off an aircraft

 

[Kremmen]

Would be interesting to take a thermometer on the plane.

I do. With the low humidity, it feels cooler than it is. Talk here of 21 being a good temperature is amusing. It almost never happens. The temp has dipped below 21 on 4 of my last 100 flights. (Three times to 20.9 and once to 20.5. AA, BR, FJ and VA, if anyone cares.) Average temp for most airlines is around 23.5-24.

Most galleys are also not heated (for reasons unknown to me), so when the cabin crew are hiding away in the galleys they tend to heat up the cabin (if they can) or ask us to.

On ANA, one of the worst in this regard, I decided to just stand next to the lovely cool galley one time. When an FA eventually asked why I was standing there, I replied that because the heat was so high in the cabin, this was the only comfortable place on the plane. They actually turned the heat down then.

Another bad one is Asiana. Last time I was on one of their flights, I asked if the cabin temp could be turned down and nothing changed. When the head FA came by, I asked again. She sounded uncertain, so I told her I had another way to be comfortable then and poured the rest of my iced water down my back. The shocked look on her face was priceless and the cabin cooled down about a degree after that.

When travelling on ANA the temperature had been set at 23 degrees, and when queried the flight attendants confirmed it was because Japanese passengers preferred the cabin to be warmer - and this was in the back of economy. Still fly them as their service is normally impeccable.

On the 763, NH would sometimes have the cabin temp around 27. I was once on a stifling NRT-HKG flight with only a handful of passengers, so I wandered to every section of the plane. It was the same (26.5+) everywhere. These days on the 788, it tends to average about 25 in my experience.

 

[Bandicoot]

I was close to vomiting because of the heat on the QF 9 and 10 Dreamliner to and from London, even with a window seat and the fan on. I thought of stripping to my underwear. On the way back I went to the galley asked if the temp could be turned down. Yeah sure.

 

[nutwood]

She sounded uncertain, so I told her I had another way to be comfortable then and poured the rest of my iced water down my back. The shocked look on her face was priceless and the cabin cooled down about a degree after that.

I love this! I mainly fly domestic on 737's and have nice air vents, but I'm saving this approach for the next hot flight I encounter.
This thread is inspiring me to take one of the many temperature humidity loggers I have stuck to my filing cabinet on my next flight. Be interesting to see the trend line.

 

[get me outta here]

I dream of being cold on a plane. It’s so much easier to put clothes off than to sit there in my ‘boxers’.

 

[ozjuice]

i've ordered my mini USB clippable fan off Ebay

 

[get me outta here]

Is it like 2 watts? How soon can you test drive it and report?

i've ordered my mini USB clippable fan off Ebay

 

[ozjuice]

once i get it i'll report, but it's not small

 

[anabolism]

i've ordered my mini USB clippable fan off Ebay

I know people who travel with them. They do help, but not nearly as much as individual air nozzles do. Fans can only blow around the already hot cabin air, which can provide a small amount of evaporative cooling. The air nozzles blow air that's colder than the cabin air, so they help a lot. I detest airline configurations without them. Just the past few days, I've flown QR 777 Qsuites and 777 2-2-2, both of which have individual air nozzles, and the 1-2-1 A350-900, without them (I was in a center seat, and there are no bins over the center, so nowhere one could put an nozzle within reach). I've flown in AA 77W F with the luxury of two nozzles. If I turned them both on full, it actually got too cold for me and I had to dial them back a bit. Delightful!

 

[ozjuice]

yes well the A350 is the main culprit.

 

[davidj]

Open a window?

 

[Revolutionary String]

I dream of being cold on a plane. It’s so much easier to put clothes off than to sit there in my ‘boxers’.

I must admit, I'm always cold on a plane (but I'm normally escape row for the legroom!), so my regular travelling attire includes a sports jacket or something like that. I'd never complain that the cabin is too cold, however, just in case others are feeling the heat!

 

[ozjuice]

Well it's a 120mm 3 speed USB / Battery powered fan and it actually works really well. Full rotate and swivel and clips onto anything.

 

[get me outta here]

That looks a good size. Wonder how long a battery lasts and how heavy it is. This could be the difference btw a sleep or over heating torture.