Narrative:

The air hoses on the new tld air units are too short and pose a potential safety issue when being used around our wide body fleet. The unit is large and bulky and has to be place directly in front of the aircraft's engine in order for the hose to be able to reach and supply conditioned air to the aircraft. In addition the ramp agent has to bring the unit up with a tug which requires them to drive up to the aircraft fuselage; disconnect the unit and then drive their tug between the engine and the fuselage and under the aircraft's wing in order to remove the tug from under the aircraft. When it's time to remove the unit the agent has to reverse the tug the same way he just exited; hook up to the unit and then back the unit out. This causes a potential safety issue not only to the aircraft but also to the agent.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier Ramp Agent reported a potentially dangerous situation resulting from short air hoses on their ground air conditioning units.

Narrative: The air hoses on the new TLD air units are too short and pose a potential safety issue when being used around our wide body fleet. The unit is large and bulky and has to be place directly in front of the aircraft's engine in order for the hose to be able to reach and supply conditioned air to the aircraft. In addition the ramp agent has to bring the unit up with a tug which requires them to drive up to the aircraft fuselage; disconnect the unit and then drive their TUG between the engine and the fuselage and under the aircraft's wing in order to remove the tug from under the aircraft. When it's time to remove the unit the agent has to reverse the tug the same way he just exited; hook up to the unit and then back the unit out. This causes a potential safety issue not only to the aircraft but also to the agent.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.