Narrative:

The station personnel are very nice and trying to do a good job; but this morning the ramp agents seemed unfamiliar with their jobs and duties. The load sheet was filled out incorrectly as it showed the bags in F1 and no bags in C1 and the rest of the bags in C2. As the forward bin was never open; I knew that this was a mistake. I explained to them what the difference between F1 and C1 was. They were unaware of the difference. When I returned this morning to try to find the load sheet; it couldn't be found. I had the ramp personal saying it was at the ticket counter and the ticket counter was saying it was still down at the gate. As the sheet can be audited at anytime by the FAA; I would hope the stations would know where the sheets were at any time. They had a difficult time closing the cargo door banging it against the side of the aircraft. The supervisor had to come over to shut it. After we finally got the load sheet filled out correctly; I penned and inked it; got the cargo door closed; I sat down in the seat and all of a sudden the aircraft went completely black. The ramp personal disconnected the external power unprompted. We had passengers on board and we could hear a few comments in the back that I am sure the customer service department would not want to hear. Anyway; we quickly started the APU so we would not be in the dark for too long and made an announcement to the passengers apologizing. Not only is it a customer service issue; but the Q is an electrical nightmare and doesn't like to be shut down without following the procedures. It started back up; fine; but I want to note that point. The ramp personal did not know that they needed to reattach the guard rails in order to close the main cabin door. The ramp personnel were extremely nice and I know that they wanted to do a good job; they were just missing a lot of things today that should be easily fixed. Furthermore; as a side safety note; a lot of the ramp personnel are unaware that during the first flight of the day; when we have the landing gear doors open and we start engine number 2 the landing gear doors close quickly. We had a few close calls in the system early with this. I had to abort an engine start the other day when a ramper was going to try to remove the nose wheel chock while number two was starting to spin.

Related reports:

Google
 

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Q400 Captain laments the apparent lack of training of his ground crew causing a departure delay.

Narrative: The station personnel are very nice and trying to do a good job; but this morning the ramp agents seemed unfamiliar with their jobs and duties. The load sheet was filled out incorrectly as it showed the bags in F1 and no bags in C1 and the rest of the bags in C2. As the Forward bin was never open; I knew that this was a mistake. I explained to them what the difference between F1 and C1 was. They were unaware of the difference. When I returned this morning to try to find the load sheet; it couldn't be found. I had the ramp personal saying it was at the ticket counter and the ticket counter was saying it was still down at the gate. As the sheet can be audited at anytime by the FAA; I would hope the stations would know where the sheets were at any time. They had a difficult time closing the cargo door banging it against the side of the aircraft. The supervisor had to come over to shut it. After we finally got the load sheet filled out correctly; I penned and inked it; got the cargo door closed; I sat down in the seat and all of a sudden the aircraft went completely black. The ramp personal disconnected the external power unprompted. We had passengers on board and we could hear a few comments in the back that I am sure the Customer Service department would not want to hear. Anyway; we quickly started the APU so we would not be in the dark for too long and made an announcement to the passengers apologizing. Not only is it a customer service issue; but the Q is an electrical nightmare and doesn't like to be shut down without following the procedures. It started back up; fine; but I want to note that point. The ramp personal did not know that they needed to reattach the guard rails in order to close the main cabin door. The ramp personnel were extremely nice and I know that they wanted to do a good job; they were just missing a lot of things today that should be easily fixed. Furthermore; as a side safety note; a lot of the ramp personnel are unaware that during the first flight of the day; when we have the landing gear doors open and we start engine number 2 the landing gear doors close quickly. We had a few close calls in the system early with this. I had to abort an engine start the other day when a ramper was going to try to remove the nose wheel chock while number two was starting to spin.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.