Week 10 Lab: Lab 10 — Board the Aircraft

Four boarding strategies, one cabin, twenty-four people and a stopwatch. Then the same four in software, and an argument about why the numbers disagree.

10 May 2027

Before the lab#

Read the week 10 notes. Bring a bag — a real one, with something in it, that has to go in an overhead locker.

In the lab#

We tape out a single-aisle cabin in the studio: six rows, three seats a side, chairs for the seats and a shelf rack for the lockers. You are the passengers. Tomáš runs the gate.

Four runs. Back-to-front, random, outside-in, Steffen. Same twenty-four people, same bags, same seat assignments every time — only the call order changes. One person on the stopwatch, two observing where the aisle blocks.

Expect back-to-front to be slowest and to feel the most organised while it happens. That combination is the lesson.

Then the model. Run the same four strategies in the simulator with your measured stow times. Compare.

The disagreement is the deliverable. Your physical times will not match the simulation, and the gap is where the actual learning is. Candidates the room usually finds: people in the room are unusually compliant and unusually bag-light; nobody in the room has a child, a walking frame, or a language barrier; nobody is arguing about a locker; and everybody has already read the lecture, which makes them the least representative passengers in aviation.

Steffen degrades hardest under non-compliance. If there is time, we run it once more with four people deliberately ignoring their call and watch the advantage evaporate — which is a large part of why the airline does not use it.

Afterwards#

Write down the one effect you saw in the room that your model does not contain. Bring it to the week 12 lab; it is exactly the kind of thing the final brief has to be honest about.