Talk:Air transports of heads of state and government

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

AVIATION This article is within the scope of the Aviation WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Aviation Portal
List This article has been rated as List-Class on the quality scale.

What about the russkies? President Rasputin the great antisemite has alot of aircraft, as big as Il-96 and as small as Su-27 for his personal travel. 195.70.32.136 10:45, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome to write the entry yourself. It's a wiki. See here how to, but be careful to observe a neutral point of view and cite your sources. Slurs like "Rasputin the great antisemite" have no place in Wikipedia articles. Sandstein 12:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] United Kingdom split debate

I believe the UK entry should be split to a new article (following the deletion of Blair Force One and merger into this article). Air transport of the Royal Family and executive of the United Kingdom is a clumsby title, but I can't think of anything better.

My reasons:

  • This article can never hold all the information. The new article should have a full discussion of early executive/royal air transports, the Queen's Flight, it's merger into 32 Squadron, the current fleet and the proposed new aircraft.
  • The UK entry should be similar to the USA entry, a short summary and a {{main|}} link.
    • Example summary:
      Air transport for the Royal Family and executive of the United Kingdom is currently provided by the Royal Air Force's No. 32 Squadron, chartered civilan aircraft and occasionally scheduled commerical flights. No. 32 Squadron's executive transport role is secondary to its principal function of providing communications and logistical support for military operations. Given that, the fact that the aircraft are increasingly unsuitable to an executive transport role and the security concerns of chartering commerical aircraft, the government plans to acquire two dedicated executive transports for the use of the Royal Family and executive.
  • The current aircraft (and the proposed aircraft) are used by both the Head of State (the Queen), the executive and the military. Therefore the aircraft are more than "Air transports of Heads of State". I'm going off on a tangent but in fact they're bought and run by the taxpayer, so while technically they're the Queen's aircraft (part of "her" airforce), the executive has more right to call them "their" aircraft. Mark83 21:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Reading the No. 32 Squadron RAF article, it sounds like that squadron is dedicated only to executive/royal transport. Why not expand the article and use that? I would assume that any new aircraft that are acquired or leased would be operated by them, wouldn't it? Just an opinion from a yank. --rogerd 22:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
My understanding of some of the comments in the recent debate about the "Blair Force One" article was that the squadron's rôle is changing and in fact it will become less "dedicated" soon. So I'd be against merging with the squadron's article. I'm actually fairly happy with the current position. But if the UK section gets any longer, it will unbalance this present page, and I'd be in favour of the move to Air transport of the Royal Family and executive of the United Kingdom – a title which is indeed long and I apologise for because I came up with it in the AfD debate! Just a word of pause, though: all this stuff about Blair and Brown will be irrelevant and boring in a couple of years, at which point the section on the UK could be shrunk down to the actual facts about air transport. – Kieran T (talk | contribs) 22:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm with Mark83 on this one. It needs its own article, it always has done, and quite honestly I think the consensus taken by the admin who closed the Blair Force One AFD was simply not present. I'm tempted to go to Deletion Review with the whole ordeal but if we can just shuffle it over to a dedicated UK dignatory air transport article that'll do in my book. Dignatorial air transport of the United Kingdom perhaps? Is dignatorial even a word? Erath 23:51, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
    • As an aside, there was a consensus for "merge and redirect", but there was no consensus for the target. The options listed on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blair Force One included this article, a new article, the squadron article, and editors not suggesting a suitable targt for the merge. My decision to put it here was that approximately 80% of the material in the old "Blair Force One" article was here already, and the names suggested seemed artificial and overly cumbersome. That said, if y'all come to a consensus here to split the article off, by all means do so. -- Avi 05:38, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not, but dignitaries is, and it certainly forms a shorter suggestion; Dignitaries' air transport of the United Kingdom? However, we should be careful that the quest for a shorter title doesn't make the title hopelessly uninformative nor just plain inaccurate. – Kieran T (talk | contribs) 23:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • As noted above, I think the new title is long and cumbersome, and as long as this section remains approximately this size, I would feel it belongs here. However, as I said above, part of the reason for the merge here was the significant overlap (in my opinion). If the history and current events are fleshed out sufficiently that it would overbalance the article, then I would agree that at that point it would need to be split—hideous titles notwithstanding. -- Avi 05:38, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
But I intend to add the full history of UK executive/Royal air transport and as a few people have said above, this article will become totally overbalanced. I'm not sure about "dignitaries" – that's a very broad term which could include senior church figures etc. Regarding adding it all to the No. 32 Squadron article, that squadron's history is much more than just its current role. Also as I said in my initial comments, its primary function is support of the military with VIP duties a secondary function. Mark83 10:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Based on Mark83's intention to add more info, we've hit the "unbalancing the main article" stage. And since he's quite right that dignitaries is a very broad term... it really does look like we have to go with the long title. At the end of the day, why not? It's not as though people have to type it in anywhere; they'll be clicking on it either on another page, or in search results. If a title has to be long in order to be accurate, then that's the right thing to do. – Kieran T (talk | contribs) 11:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Mark, if you enlarge/enhance the article as you state, then I would agree with you. At the time of the AfD close, however, I had to deal with what was in front of me. -- Avi 12:13, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
It looks like you're having to defend yourself, however after reviewing the dicussion I don't think you did anything wrong. The article had to go and you moved it to a suitable place pending further discussion (and in absence of a consensus for a new name). You dealt with what was in front of you very well. Mark83 12:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Split made

I've removed the section and expanded it at Air transport of the Royal Family and executive of the United Kingdom. Mark83 16:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ugh!

Anybody else think that this article could do with a revamp, each section is in a different style, each section has different content does not score high on a consistant approach. Not sure what the answer is though. MilborneOne 20:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I am the one who started this article. It was originally a very large section of the Air Force One article called "Analogs in other countries" or something like that. Some sections are quite small, consisting of a sentence or two and others are quite large. Perhaps we should have an standard about what information each country's entry should have and a suggested format. As a starting point, which country's entry do you think is the most well-written? --rogerd 21:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Slovakia - short and direct ! If a section had more than a few lines it probably should have an article of its own. We should have - who uses the aircraft, who operates the aircraft, what are the aircraft. There is a lot of woffle in some of the others ! MilborneOne 21:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures

Here are sources for some G8-planes: Canada CC-150 Polaris, France ACJ, France A340, Germany A310, Italy ACJ, Japan Boeing 747, Russia Il-96. 84.173.204.206 16:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. However, those photos are protected by copyright and can't be used on wikipedia. Links are perfectly OK though. --Nick Dowling 07:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This article should be renamed

Not to be too pedantic, but prime ministers (such as of Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan) are not heads of state; they are heads of government. Since they are perhaps the most frequent (or at least most notable) users of these air transports, the article title is too restrictive, even if the distinction is made in the first paragraph. "Air transports of heads of state and government" would be better, if slightly clunky. "Air transports of state leaders" would be better still, although it would probably confuse Americans; "national leaders" is incorrect political terminology. What about "Air transports of senior government officials?" Sacxpert 23:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, since I was the one who created this article and came up with the name, I too struggled with it. I knew at the time that PM's often weren't the head of state, but I couldn't think of anything better. I agree that this or any name would be problematic. Let's see if we can reach consensus on a new name. --rogerd 01:20, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Heads of Government? The term is commonly used whenever there's a gathering of Commonwealth leaders. -- Htra0497 10:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's because they all are "only" heads of government: the Commonwealth has Queen Elizabeth as their common head of state. For the purpose of this article, though, which covers the entire world, we should cover both cases: Air transport of heads of state and government (yes, minus the "s" in "transports"). Sandstein 11:00, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, you all can see my dilemma. I think that "Air transport of heads of state and government" is a little unwieldy. --rogerd 11:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, it's certainly no worse than List of notable accidents and incidents on commercial aircraft or List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by airline. I'd vote for Air transports of heads of state and government, with the "s", since there are multiple transports. Sacxpert 11:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)