A Breeze Airways flight got so hot on Thursday night that the crew said the cabin hit 98 degrees, and passengers nearly revolted. About 13 minutes after Breeze flight 1515 took off from Norfolk, Virginia, for Hartford, Connecticut, at 10:23 p.m., the crew sent a message to the airline through ACARS, the text messaging system planes use to talk to their airline on the ground. Typos and all, it read: "We cooked our pax 98 degrees in the back unhappy customrs almst had a mutiny." Pax is airline shorthand for passengers. I came across it through FlightDeck, an app that surfaces messages like this one from flights in the air.
As far as anyone can tell, nobody actually mutinied. But it's a pretty honest message for a crew to send, and it says a lot about what the people in the back were dealing with.
What Happened on Breeze 1515
The flight was already running late. According to FlightAware, the Airbus A220 was scheduled to leave Norfolk at 9:06 p.m. Eastern but didn't push back from the gate until 9:55 p.m. and didn't take off until 10:10 p.m. The same plane had flown in from Phoenix earlier in the evening, landing in Norfolk at about 8:30 p.m. Flight 1515 landed in Hartford at 11:10 p.m., about 45 minutes late.
Breeze hasn't said what caused the heat, and the message doesn't say either. Since it was sent shortly after takeoff and talks about the heat in the past tense, the hottest stretch was probably while the plane was boarding or waiting on the ground. That's usually when cabins heat up, because before the engines start, a plane relies on a small onboard power unit or a hose from the airport to run the air conditioning, and either one can struggle or fail. Once the engines are running and the plane is climbing, the cabin normally cools off quickly.
How Hot Is Too Hot on a Plane?
Most people are comfortable in a cabin somewhere in the low 70s, so 98 degrees is well beyond miserable. Sitting in a packed metal tube at that temperature can make people feel faint, and it's especially rough on kids, older passengers and anyone with a health condition. The US doesn't set a specific limit on how hot a plane's cabin can get, so it's largely up to airlines and their crews. Crews are trained to handle it, which can mean handing out water, opening the door to let air in or getting passengers off the plane if it gets dangerous.
It's also not the first odd thing a crew has shared this week. On Wednesday, a JetBlue crew logged a mouse on their plane at 32,000 feet. And if you're wondering why a budget airline is flying Norfolk to Hartford at 10 p.m. in the first place, that's very much Breeze's thing. It's the airline I called America's weirdest airline for exactly this kind of route.
What to Do If Your Plane Gets Too Hot
Tell a flight attendant early, before it gets unbearable. Crews can't always fix the air conditioning on the spot, but they can ask the pilots to adjust it, bring water or push for the plane to return to the gate. Wear layers you can take off, keep a bottle of water with you, and turn your overhead air vent all the way on, which helps more than you'd think. If you start to feel dizzy or sick, say so right away.
I honestly think ACARS messages are so funny sometimes. They're written fast by crews in the middle of real work, and every now and then one slips through that shows even the most serious industry has some funny moments. I'm also glad the crew was this blunt about it. "Almost had a mutiny" is a lot more useful to the airline than a polite note that the cabin was warm, and hopefully it means someone looks at this plane's air conditioning before it flies again.
