Thanks for the excellent review, Socrates, and the detailed photos. Very useful indeed.
If Playmobil "set more focus on design elements....on the cost of the functionality...", I suppose they can argue that they are reflecting the real world, but it's worrying that they should go that way; in the long run it won't win them long term customers. I suppose that with the lack of stairs and a lift/elevator, it can always be argued that imagination gets the klickies up to the higher floors (as with Steck), but when bits drop off easily it leads to frustrated users and angry buyers.
It's worrying, too, if the designers are taking over from the engineers. My view is probably the same as yours - let the engineer do the design and then let the designer round off the corners and chose the colour (though not too much choice of colour or everything ends up Barbie pink!)
Having said that, that walkway is great - maybe they sacrificed the stairs so that they could afford this part.
I can see the use for the stair-carrier when the airport is very busy and all the gangways are in use or when the gangways break down because of a lack of engineers.
