From a westie...welcome to our annual nightmare.
Every single summer, like clock work we have issues in Phoenix with ground air and mulitple a/c with inop apus. It's like someone in the sandcastle forgets that we have summer temps that are 110 degrees plus. Every single town hall someone brings up the issue of hot a/c and ground air that doesn't work with DoUgIe and he says the same da*n thing. " I'll look in to the ground air issues." Well, from my count he's been "looking in to it" for about 4 years now. So, if I get on an a/c that is too hot and the FD isn't there, I simply refuse to board. I make sure to be proactive and I call the inflight bubble to tell them that it's too hot to board. That way they get the whole story and not just the stressed out gate agent's version. What some of the simpletons in management seem to forget is that many of the people traveling through the PHX hub aren't from PHX and as such, they can't tolerate the heat as well as those of us who live here. Don't even get me started on the elderly and babies being subjected to the heat.
We did have a crew that was forced to board. Shortly after boarding began, they started showing signs of heat exhaustion (as outlined in the manual) so, the 2nd had the FD contact Medlink (which can and should be done even if you are on the ground) and Medlink advised that the FA's needed to be treated. So, flight takes delay anyway while they bring down hot reserves. Crew goes to clinic, but by the time the dr. sees them they are okay because they've had a chance to cool down and drink some fluids. Crew goes home and is scheduled to pick the trip back up the next day as it comes back through domicile. Oh and they were guaranteed for portion of the trip missed due to heat exhaustion.
Moral of the story, take 10 minutes and cool down the da*n a/c otherwise we may still end up screwing ourselves with a delay to replace a heat exhausted crew. I have found that if you start making calls the minute you show up and find the a/c too hot that the powers that be are little more helpful. It may still take using the words "refusing to board" to jumpstart them though.