Press Start to race the selected strategies. The Steffen Method is the optimised benchmark every run is scored against; strategies and settings live in .Space = start / pause
Challenge scenarios pick a scenario, bet on a strategy, race to find out
Score: 100 = as fast as the best-known order for this flight and seed · 50 = a random queue · below 50 = worse than random.
Achievements
What this simulator does
Boarding a full aircraft takes most airlines somewhere between 10 and 40 minutes, and the order in which passengers are called changes that number more than anything the crew can do once people are aboard. This is an interactive airplane boarding simulator: pick a cabin, pick a boarding method, and watch every passenger walk in, stow a bag, squeeze past a seated neighbour and sit down, one simulated second at a time.
You can race up to eleven boarding methods side by side on identical passengers, including back-to-front zones, front-to-back, rotating blocks, WILMA (window, middle, aisle), reverse pyramid, the Steffen method, open seating, a realistic airline group order, and a custom rule you build yourself. Thirteen real cabin layouts are included, from a 72-seat ATR 72 turboprop to a 489-seat Airbus A380, along with single and multiple boarding doors, carry-on luggage load, families travelling together, priority boarding and passengers who ignore their group call.
What happens to a carefully optimised order when 40% of passengers board out of turn?
Every run is deterministic: the same seed and settings always produce the same passengers with the same bags and seats, so a difference in the result comes from the queue order alone. The full user guide explains every metric, the mathematics behind each method, and the assumptions the model makes.
This is an educational model rather than an airline operations tool. Published boarding research supports several of the broad patterns it reproduces; the exact times are outputs of this simulation.