Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 100; Flight Crew Total 12000; Flight Crew Type 4000
Communication Breakdown; Workload; Troubleshooting; Time Pressure; Confusion
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown
Flight Crew Became Reoriented; Flight Crew Took Evasive Action
Company Policy; Procedure
On the ground at gate for short turn through flight. First Officer outside doing the walk-around; I went to flight planning to complete flight planning duties. Airplane was only planned to be on the ground for a short 20 minute turn as we were running behind schedule due to previous maintenance issue. When both pilots returned to the cockpit; we found passengers boarding. We entered the cockpit and started to finish our cockpit setup for the next leg. We found much of our setup reconfigured. We found 2 IRU's tuned off and one in align; the battery switch and STBY power switch OFF. We found the emergency exit lights disarmed and the APU shutdown. There should have been no mistake this airplane was getting readied to go right back out; our bags; headsets; papers were all in place. At first; I couldn't figure out what happened and asked to speak to the Ground Security Coordinator thinking someone was in the cockpit who wasn't authorized access. It took a few minutes to determine what had actually taken place. I learned from the station that the APU gate team is instructed to board and move cockpit switches. This has the potential to be a serious safety of flight issue. We; the pilots had nearly completed our cockpit setup for this flight when we left the aircraft. Now; without our knowledge; someone boards the aircraft and completely reconfigures our work. We boarded thinking most of our work complete; and it wasn't till we noticed Comm #1 not working that we started looking around and saw the battery and STBY power switches off. Then we saw the emergency exit lights disarmed with passengers boarding.
The flight crew left the aircraft to perform post flight duties during a very short ground turn around time and after returning to the flight station found the aircraft in a shutdown condition.