Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airlines/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
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Archive 2
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Contents

Mass changing of fleet size

I'm away to go offline, but have just noticed 68.158.41.166 (talk · contribs) making changes to many airline articles to change the fleet size in the infobox. Can somebody just eyeball these to make sure the changes are valid, i've got a feeling that might not be since they're a fair bit off the existing numbers. Thanks/wangi 23:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Again I am very concerned about these changes, which are on-going (see 68.158.69.209 (talk · contribs)). Especially with respect to WP:V. This is an important matter, we need to ensure fleet numbers in airline articles are properly referenced. Thanks/wangi 00:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
The US one I looked at had number for US and HP that when added together did not equal the total provided. I guess we need to start putting warnings on the talk page and then blocking that IP. I have not done a block on an anon IP, so I'm not sure of the process. The IP traces back to BellSouth.net with the comment 'For Abuse Issues, email abuse@bellsouth.net. NO ATTACHMENTS. Include IP address, time/date, message header, and attack logs. Vegaswikian 04:51, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I want to join this project

I´m an expert in Aviation and Airlines!!! I always read Aero International and I´m looking for new information about Airlines. I´m highly intersted in the project and want to join it, but I don´t know how to do this! Dagadt

Just edit the members list and add your name to it and start improving/expanding the articles. That's all there is to it. → AA (talk • contribs) — 17:05, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Airline destinations afd (again)

Someone has renominated airline destinations for afd after it was kept in a decision two weeks ago. If you are interested in this, please join in the discussion. DB (talk) 20:09, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Merge: Marco Polo Club to Cathay Pacific

While the afd discussion for the Marco Polo Club article resulted in a merge/redirect, there was little discussion on the deletion page, so I decided to redo this and put up a merge request. I am proposing that the Marco Polo Club (Cathay Pacific's FFP) article be merged into the Cathay article. Please weigh in if you have an opinion. DB (talk) 07:35, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Assessment

Should we start assessing articles? DB (talk) 06:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

New WikiProject Concerning Defunct Airlines

Hello folks! I have begun a WikiProject on bettering the articles on defunct airlines, most notably regional airlines which got swallowed up by the larger airlines following the Airline Deregulation Act. Also within the scope of this project are airports which were served by these defunct airlines that no longer have scheduled air service such as Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport in Glens Falls, New York, or have limited EAS service such as Massena International Airport in Massena.

The project is in the very beginning stages and I need all the help I can get. Basically, all articles in the end need to have former destinations, and I would like them to have past fleet, logos, and a brief history up to their collapse if possible.

Check out the Defunct Airlines WikiProject. It is in its very early stages. Thanks so much, hope to see you there! -Jondude11 07:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Aviation template

After making a minor edit on the British Airways page, I noticed that an editor had deleted the Aviation Template ({airlistbox}) without explanation, so I reverted it. It appears the user has removed the template from many other airline pages as well, though I have not reverted them as yet. I don't want to get into a revert war, especially on an article from another project. Is there a policy on the inclusion of the {airlistbox} template on Airline pages? I know it is standard on WP:AIR pages, but I could not find a mention of required or excluded templates on this project page. Thanks. - BillCJ 16:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

If any template needs to be removed from the airline pages, I would think it ought to be the HUGE {OTA} template. It could be replaced by a single link to the Open Travel Alliance article, with a phrase stating that the airline is a member. - BillCJ 18:49, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what value is added by the {{airlistbox}} template over the category system. I agree that the {{OTA}} template is rather large for what it offers. I have no objection to seeomg it vanish or if it came up in compressed form. Vegaswikian 06:24, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Frequent Flyer Programs (revisited)

There wasn't much of a response when I last brought this up, so I'll mention it again. The guideline that "large or well-known" FFPs should have their own articles is vague. People have interpreted this to mean just about every frequent flyer program there is. I think that line should be changed to say that the program is particularly unique or notable, such as AAdvantage (the first), Miles & More (an 8-airline program), etc. DB (talk) 03:04, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines like large and big are entirely subjective and will frequently cause problems since what one editor thinks it means is not what another sees. On the other hand fixed numbers don't work since they are usually used to exclude something since it does not meet an arbitrary number. I know this does not help, so maybe we need to ignore the large and only go with unique, historic or something like that. Vegaswikian 06:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Erm I think questions on notability are universal throughout wikipedia, and it goes without saying that just about every case for notability is subjective, including size. Hence, I fail to understand why size should be ignored in favour of other supposedly less subjective factors.--Huaiwei 23:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Ryanair FAR

Ryanair has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy (Talk) 02:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

A table for destination page

I want to hear your oppinion about the tables created for in destination page, such as Malaysia Airlines destinations. Does it look better and more informative (with codes, fleet type)? I know as the rule said that we should list down lists only, but would the table like this be acceptable? why or why not? Someone please sheds some light on the matter. Thank you. Zack2007 17:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

In simple terms, this is an encylopedia and not travelwiki. While it is appropiate to include some information on where the airline flys, providing that much detail starts crossing the line with WP:NOT. While a taveler might want to know what aircraft files a specific route, that material is not encylopedic. Vegaswikian 06:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I am not 100% enthusiastic about the table, but may I just ask in what way would this information be deemed unecycylopedic to a non-travelling air transport expert?--Huaiwei 23:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
A newbie has created a similar table for Singapore Airlines destinations, not too keen on the format really. It just looks plain ugly. Violates WP:NOT, I believe people can go to the website to find all these trivial information. Terence Ong 09:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I am not inclined to support the table format, per the reasons stated above. There is too much information. Having a list of up to which type of aircraft is flown given a specific route is too much for an encyclopedia. The article would start to look like a page in an almanac if we list all information in the table format. Elektrik Blue 82 19:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Aside from the arguments above, the info can go out of date very quickly. Some airlines are constantly changing the planes they use on each route. Furthermore, how would an airline with multiple hubs be handled? Would every plane that flies to every airport be listed? With some airlines, that would create a huge mess. DB (talk) 03:25, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Frontier Airlines routes

Seems that Frontier Airlines has editors that wish to add new routes with details like days of service, aircraft and other information. I believe there was consensus to limit destination information to only points serviced to avoid non encylopedic material issues. So before we get into 3RR teritory or an edit war, I'd like some feedback here. The last changes before my edit also started to add routes that were being dropped. Vegaswikian 06:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Braniff Flights

There is a CfD on Category:Braniff Flights that may be of interest. I should note that we also have a Category:National Airlines Flights and possibally a few others. Vegaswikian 07:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused

Can someone help a poor unenlightened soul out? Why does Wikipedia:Airline destination lists exist? Also, this (referring to the contents, not the category itself). Wikipedia is not Wikitravel and I see no particular reason why it should simply repeat this information here (see WP:NOT#IINFO) when it can be easily found on the company's website. It also looks a little like advertising for the airline companies... Axem Titanium 03:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

How is the Airline destination lists page advertising? It doesn't mention any specific airlines. It's a list of all airports with commercial service. I don't know of a website that lists all airports in the world that are served by at least one airline. DB (talk) 19:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
All the pages in this category seem to do just that. Why does Wikipedia have to be that one website to list every single piece of airline information? After all, Wikipedia is not a travel guide. Axem Titanium 22:31, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The page functions as a master list for the correct name to use for these airports. Think of if more in terms of a guideline or policy. Vegaswikian 23:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Wait, what policy/guideline are you referring to? Axem Titanium 23:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I did not say it was a policy or guideline. I said think of the list in those terms. Normally a naming convention can be created. However since airport names are not, by their nature, something that can easily be stated in a guideline, a list was created instead. Vegaswikian 00:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Couldn't the main article for each airline speak for itself? Axem Titanium 00:27, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Interesting discussion. One might one to bring it up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Livingston Airline Destinations. As it seems Livingston Airline Destinations is to be deleted, you might want to salvage some information from there. Or something. I don't know. Now you know of the AfD's existence at least... Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 19:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, seeing that AfD was what prompted me to come here and investigate. When I first saw it, I was going to say "delete" on sight, but seeing as there are so many other pages like it, I decided to come here first, before making any further decision about it. Axem Titanium 00:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

User Problem with Listening to Rules

User:Huaiwei is reluctant to abiding by the terms on how to correctly layout a page and its contents. I have justified why we make these changes and I have reverted his incorrect edits various times. I am getting tired of doing this. What can I do? Is this considered vandalism?--Golich17 00:49, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Well. Vegaswikian 06:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Livingston Airline Destinations

Livingston Airline Destinations is proposed for deletion, and the consensus at the moment seems to be delete. Please see the AfD for this article, as other destinations by airline would also be proposed for deletion. Tinlinkin 19:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Airline destinations AFD (all of them)

Every single airline destination list has been nominated for deletion. If you have an opinion, weigh in at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Airlines destinations/archive. DB (talk) 20:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm adding a comment just because i'm so surprised at this. Airlines are transportation systems. I would argue that the most important part of a transporation system is where it goes. What points it connects. That connection, between points, is the very idea of transportation. And someone nominated that information for deletion. It's nearly absurd. I use those pages all the time, for interest's sake, because where an airline flies is critical finding a path between cities. Anyhow, thank god they were kept. The only valid reason for removal, in my mind, would have been an overwhelming staleness of the information, which is not the case. This information appears to get updated extremely often, and is the most maintained part of airline articles. — Fudoreaper 15:40, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Fleet info

For airline fleet info in the infobox should I add the number of plane orders the airline will recieve for instance 100(+50) --Marcusmax 02:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Open-jaw ticket

I am doing some stub sorting and sieving through categories associated with aviation. I came across this article, Open-jaw ticket and was wondering is this real or a neologism? -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 17:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

  • When I worked as a travel agent, this was the term that was used. It was a few years ago, but I have not seen a replacement term in anything that I have read of late. Vegaswikian 18:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Ok, works for me. seemed a bit obscure to me (thats why i asked), but I am ok with it. thanks! -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 18:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Establishment Date Categories

Recently, I've noticed that some articles have had their "Airlines established in xxxx" year categories changed from the year the company was established to the year the current name is adopted. The ones that jumped out at me (because I watch them :P) are Hawaiian Airlines, Aloha Airlines, and Island Air. Hawaiian was changed from 1929 (the year the airline was founded, under the name Inter-Island Airways) to 1941 (the year the Hawaiian Airlines name was adopted), and Aloha was changed from 1946 (the year founded as Trans Pacific Airlines) to 1956 (when the Aloha Airlines name was adopted). Both airlines publicly use their original founding year as their beginning - note the "60 Years of Aloha" celebration last year. It may also be worth noting that TPA had the nickname "The Aloha Airline" almost from the beginning. Island Air is the same, being changed from 1980 (Princeville Airways) to 1992 (Island Air). In airlines with a messy corporate history with numerous predecessor airlines merged into a single corporate entity like US Airways it might make sense to use a more recent date (though that article is under 1937, the date of establishment of predecessor All American Aviation). But when it's a clear case of a single entity's history with a simple name change, I think its more appropriate to use the original date. Would we consider SGI to be established in 1999 because that's when they changed their name from Silicon Graphics? -- Hawaiian717 06:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Have you asked the editor who changed it for their reason for making this change? I have to wonder if this is somehow related to activities in Singapore Airlines where a question of formation date has been raised. In that case, it is not clear that there is clear line of mergers that trace back to the earlier creation date, the airline was one of two created when another airline was split into two. In the case of HA, there is a clear line of name changes from what I can see. Vegaswikian 07:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes I have, but the conversation stalled out a bit so I thought I'd bring it here and get some discussion towards a resolution. As far as I can see, the editor in question (User:Ardfern) doesn't seem to be involved with the Singapore Airlines activities. You can read our discussion so far on this on his and my talk pages. -- Hawaiian717 17:36, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
It is my understanding that the guidelines support renaming to keep an article in sync with the current name. This is across the board and not specific for airlines or companies. While in most cases, this makes sense, I feel that there are many cases when this should not be done. In your case, since there was simply a series of renames, leaving everything in one article would seem to be in compliance with the guidelines. I also believe that if a company name was well know, keeping an article under that old name makes sense. Why, because people who want to read about that old company can get the facts in an article and not have to filter through material that does not apply to that period of time in a 'newer' companies history.
So the trick is to establish a balance so that readers can get an accurate picture. If an article starts getting too large or the history gets too complex, then moving the older material out by airline clearly makes sense to me. However, since we now have the establishment date categories, there is the question of what goes into there. This part of the discussion probably needs to be in the Categorization discussion area. If I have an article for inter island and HA, can they both have the same year established? Or even, should they? If the position is that the establishment year applies to the name, then how do we cover this in an article. It is also reasonable for the establishment date and the date founded to be different since a company can have a later start then it can trace its history to. Think of a new company that acquires a smaller but older competitor and now owns that history. This happens often in newspapers who what to make themselves have a longer lifespan. Vegaswikian 22:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
i think we should go with the oldest date that the airline traces its lineage back to. As I said in the US Airways talk page, "Picking a 1979 date is as arbitrary as picking a 1996 date; 1980's USAir looked very similar to 1978's Allegheny Airlines. Changing the name didn't drastically and instantly change the airline. If anything the PSA, Piedmont, and America West mergers were more significant than any of the name changes." So I agree that the Hawaiian airlines should go with the older dates. I'll have to go read up on your discussions with the other editor as well. —Cliffb 22:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree as long as we are talking about mergers and acquisitions. If you have a company ends its existence by creating multiple companies, then it can be more complicated. Should any of those new companies be able to claim ownership to the earliest formation date? Vegaswikian 22:10, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Branniff II/III, and the PanAms shouldn't be able to claim the earlier airline's start date. —Cliffb 06:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
I would say if a company splits itself up, then the new entities should be considered established at the breakup date. But if one of the "new" companies is a renaming of whatever is left of the original company, then it should keep the original date. We can look at Cendant as an example. Realogy and Wyndham Worldwide were spun off in 2006 so they get that date. After that, Cendant renamed itself Avis Budget Group, so ABG gets the earlier Cendant date. Now obviously, the divisions of Wyndham and Realogy are older than their parent companies, so articles on subsidiaries should get the division's original formation date, for example 1970 for Days Inn. Corporate history gets confusing, but I'm glad Wikipedia has a lot of background on it, because I find it interesting and company websites are often pretty short on historical info. -- Hawaiian717 23:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Would it make sense to continue this discussion as a subpage with the intent to include the result within the project as a guide to what airlines that have merged should have articles? I suspect that this is a bigger issue that affects more then airlines, so if we develop something it could be adapted by other business related projects. Does anyone know of a place where establishment dates are covered? Vegaswikian 01:15, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure.. I think we've come to an agreement and we can reference our discussion for other projects. But I'd guess they'll come up with similar positions as well. —Cliffb 06:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Crash naming proposal

I've put up a proposal on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (aircraft)#Airline accident naming conventions to codify the long-standing practice of naming articles on crashes as <<airline>><<flight number>>. Comments from the group to help establish consensus would be appreciated. Akradecki 19:12, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

OTA tfd

I just nominated the Open Travel Alliance template for deletion. Comment here if interested. DB (talk) 04:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Images in articles

Does the project have a view on photographs in airline articles? I can see the value of different aircraft types being illustrated. But sometimes we have more than one of each aircraft, do the extras need to be moved to commons and referenced out?? or should we have a gallery instead of random pictures inserted in the article. MilborneOne 21:48, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I've always felt that images in Wikipedia should be there to further the text message, not just for looks. Images that show a history of livery, or a particularly significant aircraft type, are what I look for. Pretty pictures that are there simply to fill space are, to me, a waste. I know there are photographers whose toes this view will step on, but if the image doesn't serve a legitimate encyclopedic function, I believe it should be removed. Akradecki 21:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion, we can always justify one image as illustrating the airline, much like we do with the company logos, on the basis that showing the airline's livery is illustrating the airline. Under this reasoning, these photographs should be current, in other words no red/orange/blue on white for United. I don't think its necessary to illustrate every type flown by an airline, though showing major variations of the livery flown by the airline through the years can be relevant; images should be placed adjacent to text describing that era in the company's history when possible. -- Hawaiian717 23:19, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for Comment

Possible new wikiproject - Wikiproject Aviation

Hello! Several editors at WP:AIRCRAFT, a project related to this one, have proposed that a new wikiproject be created. This new proposed project would be wikiproject aviation, and while the details regarding this are Here, the basic proposal would make WP:AIRCRAFT, WP:AIRLINES and WP:AIRPORTS listed as projects under the new WP:AVIATION. Input from mebers of this project would be much appreciated at the main thread located at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft#Major_proposal:_WP_Aviation. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 14:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Navboxes formatting

bsd. i came across quite a few air navboxes, that don't use the template "navigation" (example: SkyWest end of page). while it wouldn't be a problem for boxes appearing mid-article, and probably would be even better this way, it's not the same for those that appear on the end of page. they are not of modular standard, create huge white spaces around them, thus not visually pleasing, among other problems. in short: i thought of moving them to template "navigation" format, any thoughts? side issue: many of these use different colors for the header bar, the template has a standard one, which one should be used? Ben Stone 19:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

A Single Project Banner for use by all aviation related projects

I've created a project banner at User:Trevor MacInnis/sandbox/Aviation banner. This banner can replace all the various banners used by the various projects, while still providing all the individual uses, such as categorizing articles under specific projects. It is based on the banner user by the Military history project ({{WPMILHIST}}). An example of it in use is at User talk:Trevor MacInnis/sandbox/Aviation banner, and you can see that by using the various parameters, all aviation articles will be combined under the aviation project at Category:WikiProject Aviation articles and when tagged properly, in their respective Category:Rotorcraft task force articles, etc. It will also allows us to introduce other areas of the Wikiproject, such as "collaboration of the month", and take advantage of the larger total number of users throughout the projects. Please comment at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aviation#A_Single_Project_Banner_for_use_by_all_aviation_related_projects. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 21:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Retired Fleets?

While there has been a lot of discussion regarding fleet information latyout there has been little (as far as I can see) mention of retired fleets, i.e. should the information be included? I am all for including this information as I believe it is a) an important part of an airlines history (no fleet, no airline!) and b) it is interesting to see the way in which the airline's fleet has developed. If a decision relating to this has already been made, please forgive me, but could someone please enlighten me? RaseaC 22:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Cebu Pacific

A certain User:Lukla keeps on inserting images in the Cebu Pacific article! And I think that these images does not have proper copyright! For he said that he is the creator of this work, but from the aircraft images below the image their it states JetPhotos.Net! Below are the images he uploaded.

  • Image:Gfh.gif
  • Image:Tropical Plane Fun.jpg
  • Image:City of Manila.jpg
  • Image:Vfdf.jpg
  • Image:City of Cebu.jpg
  • Image:Philippine Centennial.jpg
  • Image:Adult Eagle.jpg
  • Image:Young Eagle.jpg
  • Image:Cebu Paci.jpg

For now I'll revert all his edits. -chris^_^ 05:00, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I see the images have different photographers listed in the copyright bar. I've seen this before (every now and then I'll do a search for airliners.net, jetphotos, myaviation, and so forth in the Image: and Image_talk: namespaces) and the same person uploading photos with different names in the copyright bar, and claiming ownership, is to me a clear sign that they're all just taken without permission. I'm tagging them all for speedy deletion under WP:CSD#G12. -- Hawaiian717 05:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Airports by continent

Does anyone see a need for the Category:Airports by continent series of categories? If not, they need to be nominated at CfD. Vegaswikian 05:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I can see categories for airports by state/territory or country as being useful, but not so much for continents. On the other hand, having the additional level of continent probably doesn't hurt to much, since there is virtually no maintenance (countries don't change what continent they're in). On the other hand, a country can be in two continents (e.g. Russia), while a particular airport within Russia would only be in one. -- Hawaiian717 15:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
If we do away with the categories, the destination lists for the commercial airports would still be listed by continent. Vegaswikian 20:13, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I assume you're talking about the destination lists in the airline articles? I was thinking more along the lines that it could be useful to have categories like Category:Airports in Hawaii, much like other categories that divide things up geographically, such as Category:Companies based in Hawaii. Though perhaps the lists, such as List of airports in Hawaii can serve the same purpose, though I tend to bias towards Categories over Lists as easier to maintain, although lists do have the advantage of being able to include things that don't have articles. I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other about whether these categories are kept, or how deep they're kept. -- Hawaiian717 20:29, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm just suggesting that the Category:Airports by continent and the immediate children like Category:Airports in Africa be eliminated. All other categories, including the grand children would remain. There are about 5 articles that do not easily fit into the by country scheme and would have to be manually moved. But that is a minor issue. I'm not suggesting the elimination of categories like Category:Airports in Hawaii. Vegaswikian 21:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I don't have any objection to what you're proposing. I just wasn't sure how deep you were wanting to go. -- Hawaiian717 21:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Mass change of airline fleet size and orders statistics

While conducting RC patrol a few days ago, I noticed a user making a number of changes to the fleet statistics of multiple airlines. User:71.112.102.126 made a total 129 changes on March 14 and 15. I don't know whether the changes are accurate (that's why I didn't revert them), but thought I should let editors at this project know (see the user's contribution history for a list of all the changes). I also noticed that there was a similar issue (raised above on this talk page) with another IP user in November 2006. -- Black Falcon 20:20, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Article stability

I think we need to discuss some of the content of articles and how they reflect the stability of articles. As an encyclopedia, the content should be fairly constant and not need to be updated for changes to material that might not be encyclopedic.

For example, as a general rule, specific routes are not encyclopedic. There is no need to list the beginning and ending of these. For the airlines that have these listed, this seems to generate a lot of churn to the articles. I am not talking about including the destinations, which do update but less often, but rather a route from 'point a' to 'point b', sometimes with comments like the frequency of service. This information is not encyclopedic.

Likewise for the fleet age. This is a number that changes daily! While of some interest, it is not encyclopedic so it should not be included on every airline's fleet table. This might be notable in the history section with a citation for when the airline had the newest or the oldest fleet.

Then we have articles that include detailed code share information. This changes more often as agreements change and providing detail does not appear to be encyclopedic. For some small or less know airlines, this information could be significant so some exceptions should be allowed in these limited cases. In other cases, this seems to be included for marketing reasons rather then encyclopedic value. National pride is important, but it does not make including everything about a topic a good thing for the encyclopedia as a hole.

Comments?

Vegaswikian 20:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

On routes: I generally agree. A rule of thumb might be, "20 years from now, will anyone care?" New service between currently served destinations (such as US Airways operated by America West between Portland, OR and Charlotte, NC) is not interesting, but the expansion into a significantly different market (such as Virgin Blue transpacific service to the US) is. I agree it's sufficient in most cases just to update the destination list.
To give a more concrete example, from AirTran Airways. This should go:
On January 10, 2007, AirTran started service to Daytona Beach (DAB) and to Newburgh (SWF) utilizing their Boeing 717
aircraft. Ground handling is provided by Air Wisconsin, which also handles United Express/Mesa Airlines.
while this should stay:
In June 2003, AirTran began new services operated by Ryan International Airlines to Denver, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles using 
Ryan International Airbus A320s painted in Air Tran livery, making it a coast-to-coast airline.
On fleet page: While potentially interesting, it is hard to track. Trying to say oldest or newest can be hard too, as airlines take deliveries of new aircraft and retire older ones. Do we even have any good reliable sources for this, or are we computing it based on sources like airlinerlist.com? If the latter, might this wander into original research territory?
On code shares: I started writing that code sharing information is useful and ought to be kept (at least as a list of partners), but now I'm not so sure. I really ran into trouble trying to think of how to justify keeping a list of codesharing partners while dumping frequent flyer only partnerships, and realized I don't think its all that useful after all. If stability is the primary concern, then keeping a list of code share partnerships isn't too bad, but trying to keep track of what routes/markets the agreement covers is likely more effort than it is worth; it's the same as the situation with routes. -- Hawaiian717 21:13, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration of the month

There's a new Collaboration of the month, Malaysia-Singapore Airlines, that may be of interest to editors here; any help there would be appreciated. Thanks! Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 19:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Sox23 Adminship

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Sox23 - Just thought everyone should know. -- SmthManly / ManlyTalk / ManlyContribs 03:21, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Flight International citations

I've noticed that some editors, when providing a citation to an article in Flight International, just give the publication name and date. Would it be possible for them to give more information (page and/or url, article title, etc) when doing so, such as by using the {{cite news}} or similar template? -- Hawaiian717 17:57, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

  • This should apply to all cites and references. I have been adding
    == References ==
    {{Reflist|2}}
    to articles that do not have them. This allows cite templates to display correctly when they are added. Vegaswikian 18:33, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Daily updates for changing information

I'm noticing a large number of updates being made on a very regular basis to many articles for minor data updates. An encyclopedia should be somewhat static as encyclopedic information is generally not dynamic. I see this in frequent, or monthly, updates to information like the fleet age, or the tail numbers of the aircraft in the fleet.

I think as a project we need to question the value of updating this level of information so often. Maybe the real question is how much of this information really needs to be kept? With something like the fleet, should we have a guideline that says that we show a status at month end and then update as required the next month? Some of the updates have been solely to update the 'as of date with' no information changing! As a part of this, we might want to review the need for some of the trivial information being kept in articles about things like this.

Some of this is driven by articles that want to announce every route change. So we get one update to add a new route, not a new destination, an update when the flight schedule is announced, and update when the information changes and then an update when the route starts and maybe a final update to remove all of the announcement information. All of this for information that belongs in a travel directory and not an encyclopedia. Vegaswikian 18:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I brought up the Fleet Age update edits with Sox23 on his talk page a while ago. He responded that "... every 1st of the month I look at [www.airfleets.net] and check on the fleet age of various airlines that I contribute to on wikipedia. I make changes to the fleet age whenever the website (airfleets.net) updates the fleet age-" Since every month the fleet gets 0.0833 of a year older, with our current 0.x resolution there won't be a age update every month. —Cliffb 19:58, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Even using that one case, I believe that he is still updating the 'as of date'. So we have unnecessary updates. I still believe that the project needs to consider if fleet age is encyclopedic. I don't see how it can be. Is there some RSs that show something encyclopedic happens at a certain age? What value is there to a number that changes based on when you add and subtract aircraft from your fleet? Does the number included aircraft in storage? If not why not? Bottom line this information probably should be removed. Vegaswikian 21:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Structure cleanup

Looks like a large number of articles no longer follow the recommended structure. It would be nice to get the material in each article into the same order. Also someone has apparently decided that it is better to have history, livery, accident and other project recommended information in a trivia section and add non encyclopedic information in there as well. These articles need a concerted effort to get them back under control. Vegaswikian 23:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Codes into one table

With sortable tables is it time to replace IATA airline designator, ICAO airline designator and List of airline call signs with a single sortable table? This would put all information into a single place meaning only one update and probably resulting in more accurate information. The only downside I see, besides the time to implement, is that the sorting maybe slow. If this is done, I think the default order should be the airline name. Vegaswikian 19:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I would agree as far as the lists go, but I still think there should be separate articles describing each of the concepts. Perhaps keep the existing IATA and ICAO designator articles while combining the lists into something like "List of airline designators"? I agree with the default order being airline name. -- Hawaiian717 19:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I was only considering moving the data and not the articles describing the IATA and ICAO information. However the intro from IATA airline designator, as an example, may need to be moved into the IATA article. Vegaswikian 20:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Just like to mention it has taken a lot of time and effort to create (and keep up to date) all the ICAO code pages (which also include a full list of callsigns). The idea was to have lists to enable users to look up in whatever order they liked. A combined page would have hundreds of lines. All the information is listed in each airline article so a sorted list by airline would probably not add any value when you could go straight to the airline article. I would think a better project would be to create all the red linked airlines in the ICAO list that dont have articles ! MilborneOne 21:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Airline codes is still in the process of having the data migrated in. When it is completed it will replace the three lists and it is sortable in whatever way the user wants. You can see that capability in what is there right now. I'll probably wait until everything is converted into the article before doing a sort by airline for the final default display when loaded. Vegaswikian 23:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Just to help I have uploaded all the ICAO Codes and Callsigns to Airline codes just to save somebody a lot of typing.MilborneOne 19:22, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
That forced a change in the format to minimize moving stuff around. I think the new layout is better with the codes first. I split the table in two since it would not sort at all. Still need to move the entries into alphabetical order and add in the IATA codes/airlines from that list. Vegaswikian 06:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Zoom Airlines

Would it be possible to get some more eyes on this. Based on this and this it would appear that there is an employee of Zoom editing the article. They are adding unsourced information to the article as can be seen in the history. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 07:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Trying hard to suggest that the Scottish company Zoom Airlines Limited (which is not yet an airline) be split into a separate article to return some sanity into the article, but the company employee is fighting hard.MilborneOne 19:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I protected the article for 24 hours to only allow edits by established editors. That may be enough time to allow experienced editors to sort this out and make logical changes. Vegaswikian 00:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
If we really have two airlines, there should probably be two articles. Vegaswikian 00:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I was trying to suggest that we have two articles on the talk page to get concensus, but it became an uphill battle with the company employee he was pleasant enough to add this to my talkpage Please stop. If you continue to blank out (or delete portions of) page content, templates or other materials from Wikipedia, as you did to Zoom Airlines, you will be blocked from editing. Main problem is there is little citable information on the new airline other than the company website. MilborneOne 08:27, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Google News has some hits for Zoom Airlines UK including some that should suffice as a reliable source, such as USA Today. The question is, what information there would be all that useful and how much of the information that is being added can be attributed to a reliable source. I would also suggest that the employee carefully read WP:A. -- Hawaiian717 15:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Impossible to edit anything to do with Singapore Airlines

It is now getting impossible to edit anything to do with Singapore Airlines, as User:Huaiwei insists on reverting ALL edits. The edits done by myself are to FACTUAL edits, yet he seems to want to revert everything to reflect pure marketing hogwash.

Examples of this are:

Singapore Airlines Cargo Singapore Airlines Cargo destinations

It is now getting beyond a joke that edits are being reverted, and not only that but various "fact" tags are also being removed. I see that this issue of SIA articles has gone to 'mediation' in the past without no outcome.

I had planned to do a wholesale edit of Singapore Airlines over the weekend, but what is the point when Huaiwei insists on reverting every edit done which does not agree with the marketing line he obviously wants to pursue?

Any pointers on what can be done appreciated. --Russavia 17:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

In the 30 seconds since posting this, Huaiwei has reverted Singapore Airlines Cargo destinations claiming "remove unsourced claims". As you can see from the edit which he reverted [1] my edit is not factual, but it is quite clearly sourced. HELP my head is sore from banging it against a brick wall :))) --Russavia 17:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I count 4 reverts in the last few hours. The 3RR rule has been broken which is an automatic ban. If you're so inclined, report it on the 3RR noticeboard. → AA (talk • contribs) — 17:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Looks like you've breached the 3RR rule yourself now Russavia. → AA (talk • contribs) — 17:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Can you please direct me to the 3RR noticeboard please. I didn't know of such a rule, but will raise this issue there. Cheers --Russavia 17:50, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
WP:3RR - is a Wikipedia policy which states anyone reverting more than 3 times in a 24 hour period can be blocked from editing for upto 24 hours (more for repeat offences). Reports can be made at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR. Note, if someone realises they've breached the rule they can self-revert their changes. → AA (talk • contribs) — 17:56, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

(Outdent) Russavia continues to label my reverts as "Vandalism", when this is in actual fact a factual dispute. I would think members would read Talk:Singapore Airlines Cargo and Talk:Singapore Airlines Cargo destinations and make their independent judgements. Claiming my stubborness is the root of the problem seems to be a very convenient thing to do (helped, perhaps, by past grievances expressed by other users), when the very same problem probably inflict Russavia as well in numerous issues he attempts to get involved in. Consider, for instance, the rever wars he gets into over his personal claims on SIA not being a launch customer of the A380[2], despite being proven wrong with sources. I would equally beg everyone's attention here in reassessing the "counter-propaganda" being pushed by the above user.--Huaiwei 18:03, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

As both of you have breached the 3RR rule, may I suggest you both take a breather for 24 hours voluntarily and discuss your changes on the talk page, as engaging in edit wars is not fruitful. Any claims of dispute can be tagged with {{cn}} and it is upto the editor adding the content to prove it is factually correct and cite reliable sources. If multiple reliable sources are cited, then the onus would be on the person wanting to remove it to gain consensus on why it should not be in the article. Good luck. → AA (talk • contribs) — 18:12, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks loads for the suggestion. My voluntary break begins now.--Huaiwei 18:20, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Given the history of these articles and the various problems, we may also need to consider protecting these articles and having all issues resolved on the talk page first. Things were quiet for a while after the informal mediation. But it seems that as more editors find these articles the same types of issues seem to pop up again. Vegaswikian 20:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Codes and flights and destinations

Digging into Singapore Airlines and Singapore Airlines Cargo and their flights raises some questions.

  1. If an airline uses the IATA code as their flight prefix, should this code be listed in the infobox? I think the answer is yes since that is the flight identifier for the flights. We many need to update our guideline no matter what we decide here.
  2. Should these flights be included in another airline's article if the range of flight numbers are listed? If SQC actually flies the plane should it be listed on the SIA page giving the impression that it is operated by SIA based on the flight number table?
  3. What does an entry like '96 (cargo hold only)' in the fleet section of the info box mean? If it means leased space on aircraft from another airline it should be mentioned in the article but not included in the airline's fleet since they don't own the aircraft.

I'm sure there are more but I'd like to hear what others think about these issues. Vegaswikian 23:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The airline infobox always has the IATA and ICAO code as standard practice, the only time they are missing is if they are not known or not allocated - are we talking about another infobox?. I think listing flight numbers is not the place for wikipedia - thay are not particularly notable and can be easily found on the airlines websites if required. The 96 is just to bloat the size of the fleet by including all the Singapore Airlines aircraft that it can use - it is not something we list for other cargo airlines. The whole singapore/singapore cargo article appears to be full of non-notable and non airline related junk - although I appreciate that you are trying to sort that out! MilborneOne 11:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
So, listing SQ as the Singapore Airlines Cargo IATA code would be acceptable then since they actually use this code. Just needed to double check given the problems editing those articles. I'll also do the update to remove the 96 extra aircraft. Vegaswikian 22:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
It is a plain fact that Singapore Airlines and Singapore Airlines Cargo uses the same IATA Code. I hope users here arent assuming this makes them codesharing partners!--Huaiwei 12:41, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Destinations what are they and what are they not.

An issue has arisen at Singapore Airlines Cargo destinations that I'd like to bring back here to discuss. I believe that it is the long standing guidance of the project that only airports where the aircraft owned by the airline, or affiliates that can be listed as d/b/a, fly to should be included in destinations lists. This means that destinations with service via a code share, partner airline, leased space on an aircraft of an another airline, or service provide by another carrier not operating under your call sign is not considered a destination. Is this correct? What seems to be at the heart of the problem is the difference in providing service vs. flying to an airport. Vegaswikian 19:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I would support your view on destinations, the Singapore Airlines Cargo article is about the airline not the product, if the other editor wants an article about the product then he should be encouraged to start another article. It also appears to have the whole Singapore Airline fleet listed despite a link to the main article and ignores the fact that it only operates 747 freighters. MilborneOne 20:05, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I have again reverted both Singapore Airlines Cargo and Singapore Airlines Cargo destinations, and have added additional information to differentiate between airline and cargo product services. If Huaiwei reverts back to incorrect info, yet again, it might be best to put all Singapore Airlines related articles up for community review, because these reversions are getting beyond a joke. As to this issue in general, destinations are only those destinations which actually see the aircraft of the airline mentioned. Air New Zealand flies AKL-PER; these flights also have Air Canada and United flight numbers attached, due to codesharing, but PER does not, and should not, appear in any Air Canada or United destination list. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Russavia (talk • contribs) 23:57, 13 May 2007 (UTC).
I would be greatly interested to know how one may write an article on an airline without making mention on the product. Since an airline's primary purpose is transportation, this would be its product. Could you show us an example of an airline article which conforms to your standard, and if this standard is reflected in this wikiproject?--Huaiwei 12:39, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there a good reason why these two pages exist at all? —Kyриx 03:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there any good reason why they should not?--Huaiwei 12:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Since when was the burden of proof on the person questioning an article's usefulness? Anyway, Vegaswikian has already answered my question. —Kyриx 00:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Emirates Cargo and Lufthansa Cargo

It seems that the dispute in regards to cargo airlines is now spreading to Emirates SkyCargo and Lufthansa Cargo. All of my edits are completely sourced and, when necessary, explained. But these edits are called "POV pushing" by User:Huaiwei. We need to get some outside opinion, and arbitration if needed, as it is not going to be possible to negotiate as full scale reverts are being done to these edits, even when additional information has been provided. How do we go about getting this? --Russavia 12:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The simple reason why this dispute is "spreading", is because you are attempting to impose your opinions on the above matter on other cargo airlines, many of which, unfortunately, happen to reflect my viewpoint. This is blatant POV pushing ahead of a consideration to go for formal dispute resolution. Meanwhile, please get yourself aquainted with Wikipedia:Resolving disputes before assuming you can bring this direct to arbitration. There are plenty of steps along the way to resolve disagreements and avoid nonsensical disputes like this reaching the ArbCom and wasting their precious time.--Huaiwei 12:27, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

"Vandalism"

I take particular issue with Russavia's tendency of calling content disputes acts of vandalism, such as in [3], where a revert justified by "Stop vandalising the article Huaiwei. My edits are factually correct, your's are just plaing WRONG. Stop vandalising." appears grossly inappriopriate (and further aggrevated when an involved administrator proceeds to block the page moments after Russavia's revert[4]. Very disappointing, indeed.--Huaiwei 12:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines for Cargo carriers

I think we should expand on the guidelines in the project. It states for code shares that: "Code share destinations should not be listed for the secondary carrier.". There should be a similar statement for Cargo carriers and it articles should reflect usage of the airline's own aircraft and not aircraft operated by other airlines/carriers even if there is some scheme in place. → AA (talk • contribs) — 12:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Can you explain this captivation with ensuring all articles "reflect usage of the airline's own aircraft and not aircraft operated by other airlines/carriers even if there is some scheme in place", in relation to cargo carriers specifically?--Huaiwei 12:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
It seems sensible to only include aircraft that is flown under the "SINGCARGO" callsign (in the case of Singapore Cargo) when looking at destinations etc. Do you know if Singapore Airlines Cargo has to pay Singapore Airlines for the carriage of their cargo (i.e. are the two airlines operating separate accounts)? → AA (talk • contribs) — 13:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Then the question will be why callsigns are being used as the ultimate deciding factor when an airline need not neccesarily own or even operate an aircraft despite managing the space within. Singapore Airlines Cargo is a fully-owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, and all finances and operational statistics are reported jointly in the Singapore Airlines Annual Reports[5] and related periodical reports [6] [7]. I do not know of SIA Cargo having to pay SIA for utilising, marketing, and managing the later's cargo space.--Huaiwei 13:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Do SIA transport any cargo that is separate from SQC? Conversely, can other airlines use the cargo hold of SIA aircraft? → AA (talk • contribs) — 13:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
No. Except for passenger baggage, the cargo holds in all SIA aircraft are managed exclusively by SIA Cargo. Airlines of the WOW Alliance [8], of which SIA Cargo is a member, "codeshares" their cargo services on each others' aircraft, be it freighter or passenger aircraft. They do not directly "codeshare" with SIA, but with SIA Cargo, which in turn uses SIA's cargo space.--Huaiwei 13:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation Huaiwei. This would seem to bring cargo in all SIA aircraft under the banner of SQC but we've not heard any counter arguments yet. Please all speak up now.
To me, it would seem appropriate for the guidelines to state that an airline which exclusively provides cargo services to another airline (and does not itself have any cargo facilities) should be treated as part of the operating cargo airline and the aircraft/destinations should be listed in the cargo airline article. However, if an airline operates cargo services independently or does not have an exclusive arrangement, then this airline cannot be treated as part of the cargo carrier. Would this be a rule that can be applied universally? → AA (talk • contribs) — 16:12, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
This is my reasoning. All data on cargo airlines needs to be restricted to the actual number of aircraft in their fleet, and the actual number of destinations that those freighter aircraft actually fly. Singapore Airlines Cargo and Aeroflot-Cargo are two perfect examples as to why. Both SIA and SU cargo have their own AOC (SIA AOC info here, own ICAO codes, own callsigns, and aircraft in their fleets are registered in the respective cargo airline name, not the parent company. These airlines are perfect examples, because they were both spun-off into standalone economic and legal entities, and although they still 'manage' the cargo holds of their parent companies, they do not operate the flights in question in regards to passenger flights. When SIA announces that they will be beginning passenger flights to Timbuktu, does Timbuktu Airport announce that SIA is starting flights to their airport, or do they include SIA Cargo? Their press release, as well as government licencing authorities, will only include SIA. If one goes back over my edits on any airline, and where destinations are edited, one will notice that I am replacing "AirlineXYZ offers (or 'operates' services to the following" to "AirlineXYZ operates flights to the following". The latter is more accurate, because it could then be argued that because Aeroflot has an office in SYD, and could then be deemed to offer services to SYD. Or even because Aeroflot offers fares from Australia, they could be deemed to be offering services to Australia, even though their aircraft have not landed here in a decade. As I have mentioned also in the talk pages of these aircraft, any claim by Singapore Airlines Cargo (or any other airline, such Lufthansa Cargo, for example, to fly to every single destination on the passenger network is purely marketing huff and the marketing BS needs to be cut out and presented. Luckily some airlines do this, such as EgyptAir Cargo, which clearly states their cargo flights. As does Cathay Pacific Cargo which states that the cargo airline flies to 31 destinations, not every destination on the CX network. Or then there is Finnair Cargo which claims to flies to dozens of destinations, yet does not have a single cargo aircraft in its fleet, and pure cargo flights are only offered as a codeshare on Cargolux and Emirates freighter service. Yet, every single one of these airlines has passenger aircraft with cargo holds. And lets take it to the extreme. I have an airline which flies to 1,500 destinations around the world called XYZ Air. XYZ Air started its own separate cargo subsidiary called XYZ Air Cargo. XYZ Air Cargo has a single BoeBue AB-450 freighter, and the only route that the AB-450 flies on is Timbuktu-Longyearbyen-Timbuktu. But XYZ Air Cargo on their website states that they fly to 1,500 destinations, and even provide a timetable providing the schedules (of which 99.99% is XYZ Air passenger aircraft). I don't see how anyone could state that XYZ Air Cargo does indeed fly to 1,500 destinations. They might offer cargo product service to 1,500 destinations, but they most certainly do not operate flights to all 1,500 destinations. The 1,500 destinations should not be separately listed, as they are not operated on metal owned by that company, but which are owned by the parent. Differentiation between cargo (airline) and cargo (product) needs to be remembered. --Russavia 17:30, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Why is there a need to have a separate guideline for cargo airlines? Why do the project's current guidelines not work for cargo airlines? At one time, don't know if it is still true, the USPS had guaranteed space on aircraft of specific airlines. If that is in still in effect, does that mean that we should be listing these as destinations for the USPS? What is wrong with the position that if you don't fly the route, it is not a destination since you don't fly there. That seems to be a very basic, simple and clear position. Vegaswikian 17:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
I think there has to be some differential between FooCargo the airline and FooCargo products, I dont have a problem with the products being mentioned on the airline company page I just think claiming all the possible variations in destinations on non-operated aircraft could lead to some very large and possible non-encylcopedic articles. It is also bordering on using Wikipedia as an advertising platform. If the product is notable enough it should be possible to float it as a separate article like FooCargo(Products) and it should survive any AfD nominations. Also if FooCargo belongs to a Cargo alliance then it would seem daft to list every destination/flight combination that would then be available. MilborneOne 20:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
There could be a special case for operators which don't provide any cargo services themselves but do so under a different brand where both airlines are under the umbrella of a single parent company. This is distinct from the way passenger transport via codeshares are handled or other arrangements between airlines where they are guaranteed cargo space but not exclusively. Indeed the IATA membership page also makes little distinction between SIA & SIA Cargo and lists them both using a single IATA & ICAO designators (SIA). In this instance, certainly it would be absolutely valid if an airline starts passenger services to XYZ for the cargo carrier to state they provide cargo services to XYZ also since the passenger service provider does not provide any cargo services themselves.
The other view is that we should treat each airline in terms of it's branded fleet which are flown under their respective callsigns. As Russavia mentions, the distinction is subtle and rests on the words "services" or "flights".
The main question then, is what are the airline articles supposed to portray and what is the encylopedic value being added here? Does simply referring to the SIA article within the SQC article make the SQC article any less useful? I would argue that this is preferable since it makes maintaining the articles easier. If SIA starts/removes a destination, then there is only one place where it needs to be changed. My preference would be to add text to the Destinations/Fleets section to highlight this but not duplicate the information. → AA (talk • contribs) — 20:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Look at the discussions on US and HP during the merger. There are two airlines and two fleets operating as subsidiaries of one company. The fact that we are dealing with a cargo airline is no different then the arguments raised in those previous discussions. The deciding point seems to have been that accuracy is more important in the encyclopedia then corporate marketing hype. Vegaswikian 23:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to conclude this discussion then, it appears the consensus is to treat them as separate airlines and not to duplicate the information but simply refer to 'other' airline's article. Based on their comments (and edits), Vegaswikian & MilborneOne are supportive of this approach also but Huaiwei has argued against it. Huaiwei, please respect this consensus but if you still feel strongly against it, it may be appropriate for you to go for an WP:RfC. Also, as was mentioned somewhere, an alternative is to create an article about the cargo service of SIA/SIA Cargo if there is anything notable but the SIA Cargo article is for the airline itself. Thanks. → AA (talk • contribs) — 23:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I plan to actually revisit this issue later when I have more time to present the full facts and arguments to support my case. While I respect the process of concensus-building in wikipedia, I think many wikipedia users need to also realise that wikipedia is not writern based on community concensus alone, but on WP:V. Concensus-building usually comes into the picture only when verifable, third-party sources presents multiple opposing views, which wikipedia then attempts to present as many views as possible from a nuetral point of view. This is the essense of wikipedia. Not a singular attempt in basing facts purely on "majority views".
My relations with a number of members in this wikiproject has been strained in the past for precisely this reason. A few notable individuals here take this wikiproject as a means of advancing their personal opinions on content, organisation, and presentation, even at the expense of wikipolicies. I found myself fighting tooth-and-nail to keep Singapore Airlines Destinations as long as 2.5 years ago, when it was only the third article to exist in that category. I have a gut feeling that if that discussion was to occur right now, a few notable members of this wikiproject will also vote of its deletion. It is obvious to me that subjectivity, rather than a real understanding of the academic/research value that such information can provide, is the primary deciding tool for these individuals. I wont rule out the possibility that some individuals are allowing themselves to take positions on issues based to some extent on the fact that the opinion-making was yours truly.
Fast forward many months later, and relative newbies somehow decided that the destination lists cannot include information on routing[9], and cannot include historical information, such as the first flights and so forth. I gave up in pushing for their inclusion, and just look what is happening now. Time and again, the category gets nominated for deletion, and we will see some individuals suggesting the inclusion of additional data, such as first flights[10] [11], for a more encyclopedic list and support their continued existance in this site. What is so telling about this episode?
So if some users here cannot outgrow their perception that majority rules in wikipedia, and that lone stubborn mares like myself are best voted against, argued against and reverted against irregardless of the validity of points raised, than I suppose it is this website, and all its current and potential users, who will be the ones short-changed and having to live with a mediocre collection of information with hardly any academic value to speak of.--Huaiwei 14:24, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say these are cargo destinations of SIA. They are not destinations of SQC. One may consider these destinations to be code-share destinations that SQC reaches, but we don't list code-share destinations. What I'd suggest is to list these destinations under SIA with a note, to tell readers that these cargo capacities are all retailed by SQC, and link SIA's list of destinations from SQC's list of destinations. Michael G. Davis 22:53, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Poll

Please indicate your view by taking part in the straw poll below.

Should destinations/fleets of subsidiary/sister airlines be included in articles of cargo operators where they also exclusively manage those fleets' cargo space?

Yes:


No:

Wikipedia is not a democracy. Explain your vote.--Huaiwei 12:47, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
This is not a vote on a policy issue (so WP:NOT isn't really relevant) but rather to gather consensus on what the guideline should be, but it will help us in achieving this if everyone does state their opinions rather than simply saying yay or nay :) → AA (talk • contribs) — 12:56, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
You may have misunderstood. WP:NOT certainly does cover content disputes (and actually every instance of disagreement in wikipedia), which is clearly the root of the problem here. The voting result must not be taken as binding, and must not preclude the need for a full-blown factual discussion on the issues at hand.--Huaiwei 13:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
What I meant to say was that both approaches could be valid so it's just a matter of consensus on which one to adopt. → AA (talk • contribs) — 20:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Hawaiian717: Airline articles should list destinations served by that airline. For our purposes, a cargo-only airline like Singapore Cargo should be considered a separate airline from its passenger-carrying parent. It should be sufficient to state something along the lines of "In addition to its own flights, Singapore Cargo also manages and places cargo on Singapore Airlines passenger flights". To me this is no different than not including Monterey, California on the list of Delta Air Lines destinations; while Delta markets that destination, Delta's service to this destination is exclusively Delta Connection flights operated by SkyWest and American Eagle. Hawaiian717 20:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • AA per Hawaiian717.

Not Sure:

Airline destinations afd (this must be the 4th or 5th time by now)

Is it just me or does it seem that the group of editors who have a vendetta against these articles are nominating them over and over until they get the outcome they desire? I can't find it anymore, but there's a page about abuse of the afd process. DB (talk) 04:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Seems like it. I think the problem is that the destination articles are being taken out of context and seen as stand-alone articles rather than as subpages of the main airline articles. In this respect, I wish that subpages in the article namespace worked the same way they do in the User namespace, with automatically generated links back to the main article. American Airlines/Destinations would then be clearly seen as a subpage, with a link right back to American Airlines at the top.
This leaves us with the issue of whether or not these lists are appropriate to have on Wikipedia. That's a whole other discussion, and one that really ought to be handed here in the WikiProject and not in an AfD. Enigma3542002 and Sox23, among others, have made some pretty good arguments as to why they should be kept.
If the deletion faction do get their way and decide the destination lists should go, I'm thinking perhaps we ought to start a Wikia site and move them there -- it was obvious from the earliest replies that Wikitravel isn't oriented in that direction. -- Hawaiian717 05:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
If the destinations are deleted then we will probably get editors putting the information back in the main articles and the circle will start all over again! MilborneOne 11:58, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
This one is not, as far as I know, a result of someone out to kill the destination articles again. If is follow up up to my self reporting protecting the Singapore Airlines Cargo destinations page during the edit war there. Since I was involved, I felt it necessary to ask for a review of my actions on WP:AN. One editor there decided that all of the destination articles should be deleted even knowing some of the history. One comment there is why do Singapore airlines receive special treatment? I'm now convinced that the project needs to be more proactive in getting the consensus guidelines implemented in all articles. When there are issues, the project needs to decide to support the guidelines accept responsibility for any negative fall out or not or to modify the guidelines as needed. Vegaswikian 18:04, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Destination lists and historical destinations

Based on the current AfD, it appears that some of the delete votes would be changed if the character of these lists were changed to included historical information. Since the AfD looks like it will fail, I think we should consider adding this information to those lists. At this time, I don't know how had this will be while keeping the data verifiable.

Also we would need to format the data so that it takes less space then the current layout and allows users to look at the data in different ways. I'm not sure how we want to address the references issue since the list could get rather long on each page. I don't know if that is a problem or not but I'll show a suggested solution in the suggestions that follow. Likewise how do we deal with service that was ended and then resumed? Does it stay in the table? Of course comments are encouraged.

America West Airlines historic destinations
Test data to illustrate various listing issues not factual
City Country Began Ended Comments
Miami United States 1980 2006 Service transfered to US Airways
Fresno United States 1987 1993 Service transfered to America West Express
Honolulu United States 1989 1991 Service resumed in 2006
Nagoya Japan 1989 1990 Service resumed in 1993
Nagoya Japan 1993 1996 Service resumed in 1998
Nagoya Japan 1998 1999

Vegaswikian 21:03, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Could we combine current and historical destinations into a single table like the one you have above? The table could show most recent service in the start and end columns, with additional service noted in the comments field. Or how about separate lines for each period (I think I like this idea better; destinations that came and went a lot could get rather messy in the comments field otherwise). Regular seasonal service should be noted as such on a single line. Oh, and the table should have an airport column as well. I agree that finding the historical data might be tough, we'll have to make do with what we can and let it get added over time. Or see if we can dig through someone's timetable collection...
America West Airlines historic destinations
Test data to illustrate various listing issues not factual
City Airport Country Began Ended Comments
Honolulu Honolulu International Airport United States 1989 1991
Honolulu Honolulu International Airport United States 2006 current
Cancún Cancún International Airport Mexico 1989 1995 operated seasonally May-September
Hawaiian717 21:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
We could combine them, but I'm not sure we really need to change the current format. So I guess there are two questions on the table. One being adding the historic information. The second should the historic and current data be combined in one sortable. Right now I'd vote for the historic information and delay combining the two pieces of information until we see how the historic data fills in. Vegaswikian 00:46, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I fail to see a reason for not combining the two lists. It will be odd to the layman when historical lists appear much more presentable and readable than existing destinations, will it not? Let the blank cells be a motivating factor for contributors to research on and fill up.--Huaiwei 14:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Your proposal addresses one point that has bothered me which is a better way to deal with seasonal service. It would be nice to include the time periods in the list and maybe not need to update this twice a year. Vegaswikian 00:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

There have been discussions previously regarding historical destinations and the general feel is they are very difficult to verify so would fail WP:V in most cases.

→ AA (talk • contribs) — 23:31, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
However if we start listing a source, the historical data would be OK. As long as we don't claim it is all inclusive we should be OK with historical data. Airline press releases should meet the reliable source criteria for this level of data. As we get that or there are announcements in papers we can add it. This would make the information less likely to be subject to future deletion consideration. Vegaswikian 00:46, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Another way of putting it would be, is it possible to find out today, what destinations were served 6 months/1 year ago by an airline? Also, what is the value of this information? If a destination is notable, then it should (would?) be included in the history section of the article. If it's not notable then it may fall foul of WP:NOT#DIR and WP:NOT#INFO. → AA (talk • contribs) — 23:13, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Airlines of the People's Republic of China

I have created Template:Airlines_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China as it was not yet implemented. I think we need to gather some group consensus as to what should and shouldn't be included in it. My train of thought is that only airlines which are given certification to fly by the CAAC should be included. This means that airlines which are based in Hong Kong and Macau are not included as Hong Kong and Macau have their own civil aviation authorities with oversight for licencing, safety, international agreement, etc. Some think that Hong Kong and Macau airlines should be included in the template. Hong Kong already has its own template. Thoughts/comments? --Russavia 04:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Airlines of **** templates

Following on from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Airlines#Airlines_of_the_People.27s_Republic_of_China it doesn't seem there is a standard in the drop-down Airlines of *** templates which are placed in articles. Perhaps there should be a standard? What should and should not be included? How to present it? There seems to be different ways of doing this.

So should there be a standard, and what would be the best way of presenting this? --Russavia 05:30, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

The more complicated the templates then I would suggest that they are not likely to be used. You suggest New Zealand as a good looking template, if you did the same for the United States (which is already to complicated) and added former airlines, then it would be huge and unreadable. I dont think we need all the related subjects (cargo, charter former airlines etc) as we have to remember that the templates are there to help the user quickly find related content and should not duplicate all the categories. Singapore and India are OK as it is clear on what is being listed for the user, who may not know that sub category the airline they are interested in belongs. MilborneOne 06:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
The irresistable desire for standardising everything may be counter-productive in some instances, such as this one. Consider having at least a few styles to accomodate those with less than ten airlines, for instance, while not limiting longer lists to adopt classification styles. Also condsider the fact that Template:Airlines_of_the_United_States utilises a common means of airline classification, but which is only applicable in that country. Other countries may have their own unique classification systems too, so are we attempting to deny all of them the liberty to present their templates accordingly?--Huaiwei 14:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps standardising these templates is a bad idea, as per the US templates, and others, but it really has more to do with making navigation much easier. Take Category:Airlines_of_the_United_States, would it be a good idea in categories such as that, where there are masses of listings, to split these categories into sub-categories such as "Cargo Airlines of the United States", "Charter airlines of the United States", "Scheduled passenger airlines of the United States", etc. It would make it so much easier for browsers to find like companies? --Russavia 16:48, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Is there is a corresponding template which does the same classification, then replicating this in the categories may be more plausible. One main negative effect of extensive classification is that it may be difficult for individuals to find articles when they arent sure about the classification of the airline they are trying to find. Templates which presents all these articles in one place can resolve this issue somewhat.--Huaiwei 12:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

How to treat start-up airlines?

Going thru a heap of the airlines in the last week or so, it has astounded me how many start-ups there really are. With start-ups the fact is that prob 90% of them will never get past the planning stage, let alone actually have a single flights. In terms of an encyclopaedia, how do we treat these companies? Start-ups such as Virgin America will very likely get off the ground. Same as Tiger Airways Australia. But what about such start-ups as Blackstar Airlines, Air Gumbo, etc? Just how encyclopaedic are they? What about Family Airlines? This is a company which never got off the ground on two occasions, yet they have their own entry. Should the entry for Family Airlines even exist in an encyclopaedia? I would say probably not. Many of these start-ups work purely on PR put out by press releases which are put out in the hope that some news organisation will pick up on them. So where do we draw the line? As an example, I have put Ansett Regional Airlines up for afd Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ansett Regional Airlines

Also, I have split up the US start-ups into Category:Start-up_airlines_of_the_United_States. These aren't true airlines yet, but merely companies with some PR and intentions (some real, some not). Once they have taken flights, they should be moved to their respective category. Thoughts/comments on that? --Russavia 19:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

  • I guess for startups it comes down to really considering if they will meet guidelines like WP:V, WP:RS and WP:CORP. Vegaswikian 19:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I pretty much agree with Vegaswikian. I don't think a hard and fast rule about this will work (had Virgin America failed to get approval, they'd still be notable). I do like the new category for net-yet-flying airlines, though I'm not certain about the name, as the label "start-up" also tends to be applied to airlines that have recently started service (Skybus would be a good current example). -- Hawaiian717 19:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Agreed that Virgin America would likely still be notable. But what about airlines such as Family Airlines. Do these non-starters, nothing much of note, really belong? Should they be purged? Or kept? On the name of categories, how about "Planned airlines of ***"? --Russavia 20:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
      • I think Category:Planned airlines would be acceptable. Don't see a need to split this by country right now. One point thought. These planned airlines have to be notable. Even if they fail, they would still keep their articles because a change of business status does not affect notability. If they were notable they remain notable. I guess it they die, they would be in both Category:Planned airlines and Category:Defunct airlines, right?
        • If a planned airline failed, would they go to Defunct category? Hmm. Opening up a pandora's box here. Let's take this for example. Mexus_Airlines is a planned airline, but it has announced (by way a blog) that they are shelving all plans for start-up. Would I call them a defunct airline? I personally wouldn't as they were never an airline to begin with. The way that I personally see it, you can pump out a million press releases (of which some will get picked up in media), you can place advertisements for employees, you can advertise that you are looking for aircraft, you can even get an aircraft painted in your dream livery, but until such time as you have that piece of paper in your hand called an AOC, you are only a planned project or, in most cases these days, a pipedream. So what category, perhaps Category:Failed airline projects? I don't think this would be over-categorising, but rather presenting all of these different airlines, operating, start-up, defunct, never-got-of-the-ground, for what they are, instead of lumping them altogther in an "Airlines of" and "Defunct airlines" category. --Russavia 22:50, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
          • I think we are making a case to listify the planned airlines. That way we will be able to retain some information about the ones that are not notable on their own. I think we still need the category for those that are notable, but a table for planned airlines seems to make sense. Vegaswikian 23:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • "Planned airlines of ***" sounds like a good category name to me. It avoids the problem of recently started airlines being considered start-ups, and if the category were to include those airlines, we'd then have the problem of determining when an airline is no longer a startup. Looking at Family Airlines, I would be inclined to drop the article as failing WP:CORP. It simply doesn't cite sufficient secondary sources to establish notability. In general, I think it's sufficient to apply the usual tests for notability and verifiability to these questionable cases; I don't think we need any special guidelines to apply to proposed airlines. -- Hawaiian717 20:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Be careful about Family Airlines. I just did a quick look at it and given those involved and the stock fraud it now appears to meet WP:V and WP:RS. There are even pictures of their aircraft available. Even found out where the airline was based in. Vegaswikian 21:05, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Actually they still appear to be a functioning company and if you can believe the source, have filed paperwork to get their operating certificate. Fifteen years and they are still alive. I guess the defunct category needs to be removed and it can be added to whatever the startup/planned cat is. Vegaswikian 21:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Well, the article now establishes notability but I don't think it did before your edits today. There is a difference between a company being notable and an article establishing notability--which is how I was thinking, a side affect of NP patrolling ;). -- Hawaiian717 21:29, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
        • Yes, that is a common problem. Many articles don't establish notability and get deleted. If they are nominated for deletion they will be deleted unless another editor does some digging and points out the references or cleans up the article. I guess if you are working on the airlines project, it might be better to research an airline before putting it on AfD. Even thought Family had received local press coverage, I did not know about it till I did the research today. Vegaswikian 21:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
          • Hehe, I wasn't going to put Family up for AfD ;) But look at my Ansett Regional with the latest info from the AfD. There are plenty of these types out there, and believe it or not, some even get legitimacy by being mentioned in such mags as Flight. --Russavia 23:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Someone has put Backpackers Express up for speedy deletion just recently also. What is going to happen in regards to such articles? What is the 'list' that you mentioned Vegas? --Russavia 17:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Are you asking about the statement 'I think we are making a case to listify the planned airlines'? If so, anyone can start that article. I'd do it as a table. With Airline name, date announced, date terminated, city, country, and comments as headings. The reason for date terminated is that many of these will not survive to take flight and be notable. Vegaswikian 18:40, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Just on notability on these start ups for a sec. Does anyone remember the grandiose plans by the now convicted Scottish paedophile? That guy (NDR) generated a lot of press with his plans to buy 44 TriStars from Delta, even appearing in some industry magazines and newspapers. Yet, many in the early stages (myself included) knew it was a sham, and by the time it exactly what he was, everyone knew there was no substance to his supposed airline. It was the figment of his imagination. Before he was outed, his pipedream would have clearly passed all applicable tests on WP, particularly when it came to WP:RS. One of the figments of his imagination already exists, City Connexion Airlines. There are plenty of others out there like this, in relation to be being hoaxes, pipedreams and wishful thinking by armchair CEOs. Just some food for thought. --Russavia 02:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Skytrax links on airline pages

Has there been some discussion somewhere to agree on the mass removal of Skytrax links in the EL section of all airline articles? If so, could someone point me in that direction please. If not, as I believe to be the case, could I suggest to editors that changes on this scale be first discussed to prevent mass reverts and edit wars. On this particular issue, Russavia (talk · contribs) has been removing all links to Skytrax. I also notice that the Skytrax article itself was nominated for deletion by Russavia. I don't have any strong opinions either way but would like to discuss this with the community at large to gauge consensus to potentially avoid revert wars in future.

As I see it, Skytrax is a notable organisation providing independent research of Airlines and Airports. The discussion forums for each airline (for which the links have been removed) are moderated and therefore prevent abusive or libellous comments on the airlines but do present genuine customer feedback.

In my opinion, it meets the criteria for WP:EL and is valid to be included in the articles.→ AA (talk • contribs) — 20:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The project guidelines say for external links "Do not include un-encyclopedic opinion web sites". This includes Skytrax. On Skytrax, it might be a notable information, in that they have a few press releases picked up in media and the like, but independent I would say not, for they also do 'for pay' research. The forums are opinions only, are not backed up by any verifiable facts, and because they are 'moderated', one does not know exactly what they are blocking from public view. Whilst on Skytrax though, there are many in the industry, and I mean top management, who think Skytrax is a joke.[citation needed] Think about it for a sec. This 'company' is not registered with [12], the name Skytrax is not trademarked in any country in the world (thats the first thing you do in business), their office address is a virtual office in London, their phone number belongs to the virtual office, their fax number is a virtual premium rate fax number. The only way to contact these people is on email. Notable, perhaps, but to be taken seriously, I'd say not. Take for example their rating for Air Koryo - a supposed 1-star airline. Considering the number of people who fly Air Koryo each year, how many of those would submit their popularity votes to Skytrax for them to come up with their rankings. A ranking from Skytrax might look good for PR, hell, an award from the Womans Association of Lower Egypt looks good for PR (refer to the SIA Awards page for examples), but too much weight is put on these in an encyclopaedic environment, and we should be careful in doing so. But as to the links, yes, I have removed some due to the guidelines above. --Russavia 20:37, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Just on that above guideline, was that introduced before or after this, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2006_Archive_Aug#Customer_opinion_sites? --Russavia 20:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
I too have been looking for justifaction for the mass removal but found none (granted the help pages on wikipedia tend not to be very helpful) and I think that simply because the way the company (Skytrax) is organised is no reason to dis-credit it. It is an opinion site, but a notable one used by many and when ever I visit the site it never appears particularly biased. At any rate such a large scale reverting should not be carried out without proper consultation, in my opinion. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RaseaC (talk • contribs) 06:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC-7)
Ditto. Russavia is at it again with his mass edits prior to consultation. Wikipedia is a site hinged on verificability and notability. If Skytrax is a notable organisation, and its awards verifiable, there is little reason for Russavia to remove them.--Huaiwei 15:14, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
You will notice Huaiwei, I have not removed any 'awards', but rather links to passenger opinion hosted on their website, and it is the links to these opinions which are being discussed here. --Russavia 19:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
And you will notice, Russavia, that I was referring to the exact same thing as what you are talking about.--Huaiwei 15:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I would say their surveys and research reports are notable (and just because you disagree with them or their methodology doesn't make them any less notable) and eligible for inclusion in airline articles, but the forums are essentially opinion sites and shouldn't be linked to. Pretty much all forums are moderated to some extent (maybe not in the old Usenet sense of meaning a post has to be approved before being public), so I wouldn't say that should be a criterion for an exception to the "no links to opinion sites" policy. -- Hawaiian717 15:26, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Ditto per RaseaC.

Additionally, there is a distinct difference between the average discussion forum and opinion website when compared to the Skytrax ones. Firstly, Skytrax's awards are based on the surveys it conducts and the customer opinions received therefore they carry a greater weight and representation. These opinions are accepted by highly notable organisations such as

Forbes[13], OAG[14], CNN[15], BBC[16]. These are just a few of the 160k+ ghits. The question then, is does this make the Skytrax awards and opinions/forums suitable for inclusion in the EL section of articles? There are much worse sites linked across many articles in WP - which, although cannot be used as an argument for inclusion, is still worth bearing in mind when reviewing the criteria at WP:EL.

WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided starts by saying "Except for a link to a page that is the subject of the article or an official page of the article subject—and not prohibited by restrictions on linking—one should avoid:". The links are indeed to pages that are the subject of the article. I don't believe the links come under point 10 as it is not a "social networking site". They are not covered by 11 because they are not user blogs.

However, my main reason for bringing this discussion here is to highlight that bot changes on this scale should not be made without first discussing them with the community.

To answer Russavia's comments on the status of the company, a company does not need to be registered under it's trading name. It may be registered under a different name which I'm pretty sure it is as if it was just a "joke", I wouldn't expect serious publications/organisations to take much notice of it. → AA (talk • contribs) — 20:39, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

As per the 'company' details, it is true they need not be registered under a trading name, however, there is no current or historic details for "Inflight Research Services" in any official UK registration service. It is "IRS" that is claimed Skytrax is a subsidiary of. There is also no records of any Edward Plaisted being the CEO of any company in the UK. Don't you find it somewhat unusual that a 'company' which is known for the name Skytrax, has never bothered to trademark that name in any country? Something just doesn't sit right with me in regards to this 'company'. Of course, this shouldn't be taken into account for these purposes, but something to keep in mind when considering legitimacy of a so-called 'company'
Based on the references I found (and listed above) of notable organisations accepting Skytrax's customer surveys/awards, it satisfies WP:RS. I am sure they've done their homework before "linking" to Skytrax. Plus there's no place for OR in Wikipedia. → AA (talk • contribs) — 00:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Per WP:EL, links should add something to a page, information that can not be included, and which is meaningful and relevant information (WP:NOT#REPOSITORY). Although opinions can be relevant, I don't know if on these sites they are really meaningful, let alone that they really add to a page. As avoid points, 2 and 4 may apply on WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided. Many opinion sites may also be removed per WP:SOAPBOX.
As a side-note, these sites are spam targets, see for example Special:Contributions/83.118.174.202 (Dutch IP), or other linkadditions on pages like KLM. If I remember correctly, some are already on user:Shadowbot's revert list for that reason. --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:54, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I was the editor who was responsible for the removal of a lot of the links. The links were discussed on WP:WPSPAM. I also reviewed other discussions (on various Airlines/Airport talk pages). First of all the links seem to have been added solely to promote traffic towards Skytrax' website. Most of the links were included in the External links under the title "Passenger Opinions", I am sure you agree that opinions of this nature have no place in an encylopedia. The Skytrax reviews and pax opinion may or may not be relevant in their own right but that does not warrant inclusion in an encylopedic article. These guidlines are highlighted in WP:EL, WP:NOT, WP:SOAPBOX, WP:SPAM and WP:WPSPAM. -- Rehnn83 Talk 07:52, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Rehnn83, thanks for responding here. Your argument concerning opinion sites etc. is one that does indeed concern WP:EL but I'm not sure why these links fall under WP:WPSPAM. I've not seen any evidence to indicate they were 'spammed' into the articles. It may be that editors have seen them on other articles and thought their inclusion would be useful since anyone researching an airline could be interested in knowing what the passenger opinions on the airline are. This of-course depends on whether Skytrax's passenger opinions pages are a true representation - but that is a different argument than considering the links as SPAM. It would be useful if you could point to the evidence which shows they were "added solely to promote traffic towards Skytrax' website". Thanks. → AA (talk • contribs) — 09:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Also, on the point about WP:SOAPBOX, it would be acceptable if the pages were solely promoting the airline or Skytrax. However, I don't believe this to be the case. Looking at one airline in particular which I have flown several times, I fully endorse the opinions which show the airline in a negative light. So, they are not being used as a soapbox. → AA (talk • contribs) — 09:44, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I'll answer your questions slightly in reverse order. It is only my opinion that the links were "added solely to promote traffic towards Skytrax' website", as I cannot see any justifiable reason to include them in an encylopdic article. People wishing to research an airline (or any article) would not come to an encylopedia to gauge & judge passenger opinions. An encylopedia contains facts, e.g. Airline has 3 757's on order or Airline B flies to X,Y & Z, people, not opionons, e.g I like Airline X becuase ... or I hate Airline Y because... The links appeared to have been added arbitarily to almost every Airline including those that are now defunct. -- Rehnn83 Talk 09:58, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Would you agree then that we should indeed be discussing these links per WP:EL and not WP:WPSPAM since there is no evidence of spam? → AA (talk • contribs) — 10:23, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes & No - I believe the links constitue Spam. However as this is based on an opinon, I am willing to discuss the relative pros & cons of the links as per the guidlines in WP:EL and WP:NOT. -- Rehnn83 Talk 10:39, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Carrying on with your theme about facts within the encyclopedia, it is perfectly acceptable to say "Airline X has a poor/good customer service - so say it's passengers via surveys conducted by Skytrax" → AA (talk • contribs) — 00:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
In an earlier post I added a link to 83.118.174.202 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log), an anon user whose sole additions were spamming one of these links (vliegervaringen.com, Dutch, it translates to 'flightopinions.com'). In the edit-history of Martinair there are cases where vliegervaringen.com and flightopinions.com are changed into each other (see diff and diff, both on Martinair). But I agree that they should be discussed per WP:EL here, keeping in mind that there are cases where they get spammed (those records are on WT:WPSPAM). I also agree that these sites do not belong on wikipedia, per WP:SOAPBOX. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I think this quote above is highly misleading: "The project guidelines say for external links "Do not include un-encyclopedic opinion web sites""

3 points:

  1. WP sets policy not this project linkspam posse of vigilantes that parachute into articles and make large scale deletions without the courtesy of discussing them with their fellow editors first. We are the encyclopedia providing a balanced NPOV summary of referenced points of view.
  2. Please see Wikipedia:External_links: "page in a nutshell: Adding external links can be a service to our readers, but they should be kept to a minimum of those that are meritable, accessible and appropriate to the article" and also Wikipedia:External_links#What_should_be_linked: "Sites with other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article, such as reviews and interviews."
  3. Project Linkspam is founded on a fallacy: that website promoters are trying to get inbound links from WP to boost their "google juice". This was true some months ago but now ALL external links, whether in a section called that or in the article body, have the HTML code <nofollow> added automatically to them so they do NOT now get a google boost! ...Gaimhreadhan(kiwiexile at DMOZ) • 01:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

El Al FA Nomination

I have nominated El Al for a FA status following its recent awarding of GA Status. Please feel free to leave comments at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/El Al. -- Flymeoutofhere 07:08, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Listings by country

There are hundreds if not thousands of listings by country managed by this WikiProject. But many of them present an anomaly from what is common beyond this WikiProject and in printed publications outside Wikipedia. Take the lists of airline destinations for example, some countries that are not sovereign states are not listed as countries, but as divisions of countries. These include countries such as the United States Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Hong Kong, etc. As this project deals with airlines, I would consider the ICAO and IATA country code lists good bases for reference. Michael G. Davis 23:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The airline project is about airlines and is not about politics or sovereign states. The lists are there to help readers find information. In the destination lists the destination is linked to the related article where readers can read any political/sovereignity issues. Also the ICAO Documents for example completely ignore the Republic of China/Taiwan. MilborneOne 11:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
User:Michael G. Davis is known to be symphathic to User:Instantnood, the later of which is currently banned after three WP:RFARs and repeated sockpuppetry.--Huaiwei 12:31, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Frequent flyer

The last discussion on this didn't really reach any conclusions, but I think the guideline on frequent flyer programs needs to be changed. Even large and notable programs such as AAdvantage (the first in existence) have been marged back in. However, I got opposition - citing this project - when I put a merge request on LANPASS. If AAdvantage and Executive Club are not notable enough for their own articles, then this one certainly isn't. How about just changing the guideline to only include multi-airline programs (Miles & More, etc.) and programs not actually run by a carrier (Aeroplan and the like)? DB (talk) 03:03, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The American Airlines article deals PERFECTLY with AAdvantage, except for it not being referenced. It gives a brief history of the program (which most others don't), and it gives a brief description of the benefits available, and on which other airlines benefits are accruable. Frequent flyer programs are intricate programs and are subject to frequent and wholesale change, restrictions, blackouts, embargoes, etc, and as such, does an encyclopaedia really need a cut and paste job from the airline FFP website as to the complete benefits available? Take for example KrisFlyer, the FFP of one of my favourite encyclopaedic airlines; it may as well have an application form attached to it, as it is nothing more than an advertisement. The same goes for Skywards, Asia Miles, EuroBonus, Enrich Loyalty Programme, Flying_Blue and Miles & More. I will leave LANPASS off that list as it has a long way to go to get it up to advertisement standard. Multi-airline programs, such as Miles & More should have text in the airline article with specifics as to that airlines involvement in the Miles & More program, with main details in Lufthansa. Aeroplan I would say keep separate as it is a separate company, listed on the stock exchange, and would have notability as being the first FFP to list on a stock exchange (insert fact tag here???). Which brings me to this question. Template:Frequent flyer programs, why is Air Miles listed, when it is not a FFP, but a shopping loyalty program? (I have removed it, as well as AAdvantage and Smiles & More as they don't have their own pages). And back on topic, it is interesting to note that those articles which these FFP pages are rated very low on the quality scale. More time should be put in to improving the main airline article, particularly HISTORY, and then add small parts of marketing later into the main airline article. --Russavia 04:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
The inclusion of any article in wikipedia is governed by Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, and that includes articles on frequent flyer programmes. If a programme is proven notable, than it has every right to stay, and not by some arbitruary decision to only include multi-airline ones etc, and to exclude articles just because they sound like adverts. Clearly, some folks here just can't resist poking in a certain direction.--Huaiwei 13:17, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention Wikipedia:Verifiability. That is one area where all of these frequent flyer programs are lacking in that few, if not NONE, provide third-party sources for their information. KrisFlyer is one with only primary sources. Enrich_Loyalty_Programme is another. Flying Blue is another. The rest are totally unreferenced. --Russavia 01:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The term hub/focus city

The terms hub and focus city are in my mind very American and possibly Euro-centric terms and don't quite work in entries for smaller airlines and airlines from many other parts of the world.

As an example, Northwest Airlines has hubs in MSP, DTW, MEM, NRT and AMS and has IND and HNL as focus cities. The operations of the airline directly correlate to the definitions of the hub and focus city (hub and spoke) airline operation.

Then we have Aeroflot, which has SVO as its hub; it is a hub in the definitive sense in that passengers will fly Aeroflot from other cities and transfer at SVO to the rest of the airlines' network.

Then we have Polar Airlines, it is based in Yakutsk, and utilising templates of this project, its hubs are: Yakutsk, Batagai, Belaya Gora, Magan, Moma, Nyubra, Olekminsk, Srednekolymsk and Tiksi. However, this is not accurate, not even for Yakutsk. Not all airlines operate on the hub and spoke model. Using Polar Airlines as the example, a passenger in Ust-Maya will fly Polar Airlines to Yakutsk for one of two reasons; either their intended destination is Yakutsk, or somewhere further afield (such as say Moscow) where Polar does not fly to. Traffic between Ust-Maya and Cherskiy via Yakutsk would be minimal if not non-existent, and even if there was traffic between these two points, the schedules of the airline do not fit in with it being a hub as a 3 or 4 days layover in Yakutsk would be necessary, so this doesn't quite fulfill the 'transfer' operation of a hub and spoke airline. Then we have the other 'hubs' of the airline, for example, Batagai. Operations from Batagai are limited, but the airline does base aircraft there, as it does in the other 'hubs', but the operations don't fulfill the definition of a focus city. They are more correctly defined as bases for the airline.

Kyrgyzstan Airlines is another example, Manas is more of a base for the airline, rather than a hub as most traffic originates from or going to Bishkek. There are limited destinations (well Moscow only actually) serviced from Osh, and Karakol is used in the summer season for direct point-to-point flights. Manas is a base, Osh is a secondary base, Karakol is a base on a limited basis.

Now transplant this to a larger airline, and an example is El Al. The airline is based in Tel Aviv, but does it actually hub there? According to Yoah Levy, the vice president for commercial and industry affairs, it does not. El Al is purely a point to point airline. Quote: “In North America, we are the dominant airline. We operate up to six flights a day to the six destinations of New York JFK, Newark, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Toronto. In the summer we deploy the 747-400 and the 777. We also dominate the Asian routes. We are the only airline to fly non-stop from BGN to Bangkok, Peking, Bombay and Hong Kong. However, we are not able to exploit this advantage to the full, as international passengers do not use Tel Aviv as a hub for Asia. On the other hand, we are able to offer Israelis non-stop flights with full service." Endquote[17] Ben Gurion is a base for El Al, not a hub.

We really should be taking the various types of airline operations into account in the articles, particularly within infoboxes and the like, as not all airlines operate the same way as many American and European airlines. --Russavia 02:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Coordination for improved productivity

Could everyone have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Aviation Project Coordinator Proposal, and make any comments there. This is an idea that the Military History project uses, and their production of high quality articles far exceeds ours. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 23:55, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Royal Bengal Airline and Air Sylhet

Could fellow members please comment on the following issue on the above two airlines?

  • Background: Both airlines are new startups launching services in the next couple of months.
  • Problem: Royal Bengal Airline has registered the trademark name "AirSylhet" along with the company logo of Air Sylhet.[18] They are separate airlines competing in the same space so this is a very unusual situation. I have tried to present this information in a NPOV manner in both articles:
  • Air Sylhet:

    For reasons as yet unknown, the Air Sylhet logo and name is registered as a trademark of Royal Bengal Airline, another recent startup airline competing in the same space as Air Sylhet.

  • Royal Bengal Airline:

    For reasons as yet unknown, among the trademarks registered to Royal Bengal Airline, is the name and logo of Air Sylhet, another recent startup airline competing in the same space as Royal Bengal Airline.

However, as soon as I had done this some anon editors started removing it. The discussion page of Royal Bengal Airline was also virtually blanked where discussion of this info had occurred. I had to request page protection to prevent the disruption by anons who were not engaging in dialogue.

The latest development is a "psuedo" legal warning not to include this information (See this talk page discussion).

My opinion is that both companies are actively advertising for investment from the general public and information on this trademark dispute is valuable information to people intending to invest so it should be presented and I have kept it succinct and factual with no allegations or inferences drawn for either airline.

What is the opinion of others here? I have said that I will go with the consensus from the WP:AIRLINE community.

→ AA (talk • contribs) — 22:46, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Note that the trademark registration is in the United Kingdom and not Bangladesh it could be that Royal Bengal may be acting as a sales agent in the UK for Air Sylhet - although I can not find anything citable. Most of these "airlines" appear to be investment vehicles, they might just dissapear if they dont raise enough money. But I agree it should be mentioned until somebody can prove what is going on, the UK trademark information is in the public domain so the legal threat by the editor is a little unjust. MilborneOne 22:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Clarification: Royal Bengal Airline is the trading name of R B Airline Ltd, a UK registered company. It is also the trading name of Aviana Airways (Bangladesh) Ltd, a Bangladesh registered company. Air Sylhet is a UK registered PLC and there is no information to suggest there is any collaboration between the two companies - although this would be news to investors if it were true. → AA (talk • contribs) — 23:00, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Royal Bengal Airline is knowingly registered the trademark of AIR SYLHET PLC from the Airsylhet.com official website. If you have a good vision, perhaps look very carefully the Air Sylhet logo is identical in IPO database. If the logo was different in IPO website, then perhaps you can say UNKNOWN. This is not the case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.163.215 (talk)

Logo images being deleted....

Having a look at my watchlist it seems a lot of the airline logos are being deleted due to there being no fair use rationale provided. It would seem that the required fair use rationale is what is on Image:British_Airways_logo.png. I have been going thru and adding fair use rationales to any which come up in my watchlist, but I only have a small percentage of airline articles on my watchlist, so perhaps other editors could check those for which they are regulars on and add the rationale, if it isn't already present. --Russavia 03:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that too. On a related note, I noticed that User:Jet1011 uploaded a bunch of older logos supposedly from his "personal collection" (I'm pretty sure at least some came from aerosite.net). The thing is, many were just added haphazardly. Do we really want to keep them? ATA Airlines#Livery actually integrates them well, with a section describing the airline's different logos and livery, so it fits in there, but in many cases they're just there with no related discussion in the article text, and maybe a caption describing the years it was in use. -- Hawaiian717 05:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
You mean as in like Ghana Airways? Not only is this not a logo, but in a lot of cases these 'logos' are copyrighted graphics and the such. Such 'logos' I would be getting rid of.
I hadn't seen that one, it's pretty bad and more than just a logo. There is a copy of an advertisement on Air California that should go too. I was thinking though more along the lines of the two logos on the right side of the AirCal article, captioned "Old Air California Logo" and "Air California 1981 Logo", or the many old logos on Aloha Airlines. Anyway, the policy I would suggest would be to show the airline's current logo in the infobox as we do now. If old logos are to be displayed as well, they should be there to accompany text discussing the livery or logo from the period, as on the ATA article. -- Hawaiian717 15:07, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Some concerns have been raised at the Japan Airlines article that the logo has some copyright issues. I have added a fair use rationale - but some are concerned that the resolution in its use in the article is perhaps too high, do you think the resolution should be lowered? Unfortunately the person who uploaded the image does not seem to want to want to talk about it (User_talk:RadicalBender) Camaron1 | Chris 14:54, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like it's User:SunKing that uploaded the current version. I would be inclined to agree that it's probably a bit excessively large. There is also the issue of SVG logos that seems to crop up on time to time on WP:LOGO, since as vector images they can be rendered at any resolution. Since we don't really have a need for a logo that big, I wouldn't have a problem with scaling it down to a much more reasonable size. -- Hawaiian717 18:11, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately my attempts at scaling down the resolution just messed up the image as it was vector - so I am going to need someones help if the resolution is going to be lowered. We could revet back to the original at 150×118 - though that would be quite small. Camaron1 | Chris 20:05, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
I was able to get the image resized properly. Hawaiian717 22:17, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Excellent, hopefully we should not have any more problems with this image. Camaron1 | Chris 09:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll also mention that while we're at it; if you're editing a logo page to add a fair use rationale, you might want to check to see if it's properly sorted into Category:Airline logos by having |Airline logos in the license template. -- Hawaiian717 18:30, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Tail numbers

Now that it seems clear that articles on aircraft by tail number are generally not going to be notable, N135CR at AfD, I'd like to ask if any use of extensive or inclusive lists of tail numbers in articles have sufficient notability to be kept. I'm thinking that these are non encyclopedic listcruft. One obvious possible exception would be for Frontier Airlines where there is unique art associated with each tail number. Should the project be updated to address this? Vegaswikian 21:13, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

In general, I think they should go. Lists of tail numbers should only be to describe moderately notable aircraft. In addition to the Frontier tails you mention, I'd include special livery aircraft such as the US Airways heritage, state, and sports team planes and the Southwest Airlines special liveries. The inclusion of tail numbers on the fleet table on Singapore Airlines, for example, should go. There are plenty of sites for tracking fleet info, such as airlinerlist.com. I think this falls outside our scope of interest -- it is difficult to track, even harder to verify from a reliable source, and hurts article stability. -- Hawaiian717 21:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Destinations articles

While patrolling new pages recently, I noticed Air Ivoire destinations and another new destinations article lacked verifiable reliable sources. I pointed this out by placing the "sources" template on the articles.

A user I think may be a part of this project asked me about the template I applied, pointing out that these articles routinely lack sources. He also removed the templates, and I haven't replaced them because it became apparent to me that the issue is one with what appears to be the whole class of destinations articles.

I think we all accept that there are official policies of this project we must abide by like WP:V and WP:OR. I'm concerned that these pages do not live by that standard. I have noticed that they have been to AfD on at least two occasions and have survived, so my intention here is not to march them back to that possible status. Instead, I thought I'd raise the issue here to see if there is a project consensus as to what to do. It just seemed a better course of action than a Request for Comment, but that may be the next necessary step.

The biggest question appears to be whether these pages are actually a part of your project. I haven't noticed any destinations articles carrying this project template on their talk pages, but they do appear to clearly be related. Erechtheus 14:37, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that sources should be indicated in the destinations article. Links to routemaps of the airlines can be inserted, provided that they are official, and not from third-party sources. However, not all airlines have routemaps in their websites, let alone a functioning website, for some carriers. Thus, the usual source would be official published schedules such as data from Amadeus.net or OAG.com. The problem with this is that you cannot link to these sources, due to the fact that they usually are in a format in which one can search for specific routes and times, but that's all there is to it. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 15:59, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
There are always press releases. However for major airlines, remember that these references will get added a few at a time. Since that reference remains the source of the information, it should not be replaced with a newer reference since the original reference date would be lost. As a result, some articles would have hundreds of references. Vegaswikian 18:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Really big logos

I've been using AutoWikiBrowser to add fair use rationales to the images in Category:Airline logos (yes, I know not all of them are there, but its a start), and some of the images there are really big. Some were over 6000 pixels wide. I think those don't pass the requirement that fair use logos be low resolution. Unless anyone objects I'm going to start scaling them down to a lower resolution in the next few days. -- Hawaiian717 16:20, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

You are doing a good job - no objection.MilborneOne 17:33, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I can see what you mean - some are far bigger than they need to be. No objection from me. Camaron1 | Chris 18:15, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Airline article up for deletion

The Puerto Rican airline Air Culebra is up for deletion. Here is the AfD. (Note: I did not initiate this Afd. It is listed here becuase it falls into the scope of this project.) --Oakshade 03:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Shuttle America incidents

Just deleted an incident added to the Shuttle America article, I removed it as non-notable as it was about an aircraft being delayed for seven hours. User:PaulinSaudi has reverted the deletion on the grounds that a seven hour delay is a notable incident. Can anybody have look and provide a second/third opinion please. Thanks . MilborneOne 15:11, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Well, incidents seem to have consensus to limit these to deaths, major airframe damage and aircraft impacts with another object where there were major injuries. I could see a delay being added to the list if we had multiple reliable sources that showed it was the longest one on record. The problem with the latter is that once it is no longer the longest would be still be notable? Vegaswikian 19:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Delays, even ones that are seven hours long, happen frequently, however with delays such as the jetBlue one in Februrary when you have disgusting conditions insdie the aircraft and media outrage the notability levels rises. My opinion on this is to rule each one individually. I have a feeling this summer the United States will see a lot of these types of delays, so we have to decide how we should judge their notability. NcSchu 21:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
      • Reliable sourcing these shouldn't really been a problem, in recent months it's happened several times and gathered lots of media attention. The JetBlue incident really got people to take notice, but there had been a couple of similar incidents even before that. One or two with American in Texas (Austin maybe?) come to mind. Perhaps these should all be collected into a single "2007 airline delay incidents" sort of article? -- Hawaiian717 00:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

New airline destinations list

I'm gonna make destination list of airlines, and I'll update the current lists. I was wondering... should we state our references in the article because I notice that most destination lists has no references stated. -chris^_^ 08:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Yes, references would be nice. The question is what is the best method. If we footnote every entry., then we will have done the best possible job with no questions as to where each piece of information came from. However, this could be a maintenance nightmare and discourage some editors from doing updates. If we just added a reference at the bottom for the source that we used for each set of updates, the file would be smaller at the start and updates easier. However, we would retain references that are for data that is no longer in the article. So I guess referencing each entry would be the proper direction to take. I expect that this will not get a warm welcome. I guess that as long as a significant number of entries have references, it would be acceptable. However, if someone adds {{tl:fact}} to all entries that are lacking a reference, it could be a messy article and we might have another round of AfD nominations. Vegaswikian 18:12, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • This probably isn't proper format by any means, but what I usually try to do is add the source in my edit summary whenever I add a destination. Sometimes I forget but I look at this as being the best way without cluttering up the page. NcSchu 18:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I added the ref once to my edit summary, then they added the {{tl:fact}} to the article page. -chris^_^ 02:50, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

AirAsia destinations

I noticed that all destinations of AirAsia and their subsidiaries (except FlyAsianXpress) is in one destination list, shouldn't we separate these per airline? -chris^_^ 10:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

  • I would think that each airline should have its own list. Either in the article or as a separate article if large enough. In the case of closely operated airlines, it could make sense to combine them into one article. But that would be decided on a case by case discussion. Not sure what th criteria would be to make that call. Vegaswikian 18:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I go with separate articles for each airline. -chris^_^ 02:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Eastern Airways images

I have removed some images sourced from Airliners.net in the Eastern Airways article, User:Rawky123 keeps putting the images back including declaring on the images pages that The copyright holder allows anyone to use it for any purpose... Despite this the images themselves clearly show they are copyrighted by individuals. I have removed them twice now and not wanting to break 3RR rules can anybody help. Can we challenge the images themselves? MilborneOne 22:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Airliners.net images get uploaded on a regular basis. I've listed these three on Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion, and it looks like this user has other uploads that should go too. I thought I'd go the IFD route on these, but often I just use WP:CSD#G12 for a speedy deletion as a copyright violation for photos from Airliners.net and the other photo sites (MyAviation, JetPhotos, etc). -- Hawaiian717 23:35, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Air South Charter notability

Hi, can I have some input over at the above article regarding notability please? See also the relevant discusion at the bottom of my talk page. Thanks Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 23:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it could be a real airline. Does it have an IATA or ICAO code? Vegaswikian 00:01, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Nothing under that name in the ICAO code and callsign list. MilborneOne 11:16, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Retrojet

Can somone take a look at Retrojet? Is this a dictdef, nonsense or something that needs expansion? Vegaswikian 05:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I say we keep and expand it. It seems like it happens frequently enough that it's worth having, especially if we can build up a useful history section (Who was first? What airlines have done them?). The only other generic term I can recall hearing for this type of livery is "Heritage Aircraft" (or something like that), used by US Airways. Oftentimes, airlines will use a term that refers specifically to the livery shown, such as American's "Astrojet" and Aloha's "Funbird". Retrojet seems as good of a generic term as any, and if we find something better we can always move the article. -- Hawaiian717 15:10, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I may go with "Heritage Aircraft" on a rename. While it gets fewer hits, Retojet gets some false positives so there are other, albeit minor, uses. Heritage Aircraft is also less ambiguous. It also appears to be the more common term for museums for older aircraft. So the article could be expanded to those as well. Vegaswikian 17:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't object to moving the article to "Heritage Aircraft". -- Hawaiian717 17:51, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

SVG image avaliable for airline stub

Image:Airlineicon.svgDear fellow Wikiproject Airliners, I made an image for your airline stub at the commons. Please replace the PNG asap. Thanks! --JackLau 09:32, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind me asking, but what exactly is it? Shouldn't we have a more descriptive picture? NcSchu 15:03, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
I think it's supposed to be a generic airline tail, replacing Image:Airlineicon.png. However, isn't the point of using SVG to display information more efficiently? In this case, the SVG version, at 908 bytes, is actually larger than the 192 byte PNG. While at full size the PNG doesn't look too good, at the 20px size used in {{airline-stub}}, I don't see a difference. Perhaps Image:Takeoff.png or Image:PlaneClipart-small.png would be better graphics to use for the stub icon? -- Hawaiian717 15:32, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Project template up for deletion

Heads up, folks...{{Air Transport Association}} has been nominated at TfD (here) for what seems to be a fairly flimsy reason...consider visiting the TfD page and speaking your piece, whichever side you're on. AKRadeckiSpeaketh 14:44, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

World's largest airlines

Yeesh ... someone want to take a look over there? It's a mess of reversions between two users right now, and I'm not really going to bother jumping in until they're done. But, anyway, there's a ton of forked articles over there, some of which probably aren't entirely necessary; List of largest airlines in the World, for example. I'll fix it up eventually, but if there's any specific style this Wikiproject wants to jump in and use, now might be a good time. — Rebelguys2 talk 03:59, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Unless there are some serious objections here, I think an AfD for the largest by continent articles would be a good start. Vegaswikian 05:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I wonder based on what grounds are you suggesting this. Discussions such as [19] actually show preference for the article's conversion to a summary-style format similar to World's busiest airport and World's busiest port, both of which are functioning without incident.--Huaiwei 05:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I was making the AfD suggestion for the by continent ones only. I can see having a single list, but by continent? Vegaswikian 07:31, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Those were created due to suggestions made at [20]. Anyhow, a couple of these data are far more developed and updated than the global lists.--Huaiwei 13:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Btw, User:Sparrowman980 created List of largest airlines in the World despite my creation of the following when I turned the article into a summary page:
I see this is outright disruptive. Notice also his creation of List of largest airlines in Central America & the Caribbean, despite the existance of List of largest airlines in North America and List of largest airlines in South America. I promptly converted the former into a redirect, for since when was South America a part of Central America or the Caribbean?--Huaiwei 05:44, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not a huge fan of the largest-by-continent articles, either, but I'm not sure there would be a consensus to delete them. What I think might be best is to merge the information from List of largest airlines in the World back into some kind of clear, useful format in World's largest airlines. The "See Also" section could fork out to the continent-specific articles, if they're still around, as well as the other worldwide lists that Huaiwei's made.
I proposed this format quite some time back, which would probably be rather similar to your suggestion. What do you feel about it? The only user who disputed it was User:Sparrowman980, who has been wikiwarring with me when I tried to impliment it without even stating his reasons for rejecting the summary-styled version in a clear, coherent manner.--Huaiwei 13:56, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
As for photos, WP:LAME aside, we should have each section just feature the No. 1 airline on that list. — Rebelguys2 talk 05:47, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Categories

With some of the cleanup in Category:Airlines it has exposed an interesting missing cat. We have categories for Air ambulance services, Cargo airlines, Defunct airlines, Helicopter airlines, and Low-cost airlines but not for charter airlines or passenger airlines. Should these be added? Vegaswikian 21:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Category:Charter airlines should definitely be a category, and I will start to add these as I go thru the rest of the categories as part of the cleanup of all of these categories. Now the question, do we simply just do them as Category:Charter airlines, or Category:Charter airlines of...? Unlike the Planned airlines of... category, I think that Category:Charter airlines is suffice? --Russavia 08:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Agree about one major cat since they are already listed in an airline by company category. Vegaswikian 19:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Some lists up for deletion need attention

I have nominated the following for Afd

Airlines of Pakistan List of airlines in Ukraine List of airlines in Serbia

Last week List of airlines based in Nepal was put up for afd, and was deleted, as it should be

As these are squarely within this project scope, others should make known their opinions on such lists at the relevant Afds. --Russavia 12:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

With community concensus helping to keep all three articles above, I have initiated an exercise to review the deletion of List of airlines based in Nepal, first via a notice at the administrator's talkpage.--Huaiwei 04:03, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Auto archiving

Any objections to letting User:MiszaBot_II automatically archive the contents of this talk page? Vegaswikian 07:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Add the financial performance

Several months ago, the financial performance of British Airways was put up. Is it useful to include it on other airlines? The reports are quite easy to find - they should all be available to the public. At a minimum, the passengers flown is a useful piece of data, along with maybe turnover. I personally used the data in the BA article for a school coursework and it can be useful to readers. American airlines' report can be found here [21], simply by searching "airline annual report". --TheTallOne 19:21, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with it on principle. But since many airlines are private companies, they don't release financial performances very often, so it might be difficult to include it on a majority of airline pages. NcSchu(Talk) 19:45, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
If we consider major airlines around the world, I doubt this will be as big a problem as suggested. Even unlisted companies and state-owned airlines do occasionally release ridership and fiancial figures even thou they are not obliged to, especially if they are major companies. Including financial information for some airlines need not require the same to appear in every single airline article.--Huaiwei 02:34, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Focus city definition

Looks like we need to better define this. Apparently AirTran Airways is now considering any city they serve from 5 destinations to be a focus city. This makes for a very long infobox. It is also causing some reverts. Can we arrive at a better definition? Starting with 5 would mean that many airports become focus cities. This is apparently based on something in here, but I just don't see it. For now I'm going to revert these out again. Vegaswikian 02:54, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Do we need to have this "focus city" designation at all? —Kurykh 04:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
That would be my sentiment too. However, because WP is not a paper encyclopaedia we don't have pressing limitations of space and consequently tend to be a bit of an inclusionist - I can see the difficulties with the Infobox, etc, though...Gaimhreadhan (kiwiexile at DMOZ) talk • 08:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
It has nothing to do with inclusionism or deletionism, it's more like the inability to define this ambiguous term (ignore the redundancy). —Kurykh 19:16, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

New infobox needed?

In going thru the categories which relate to this project, and having a look at literally hundreds of articles, I think that an improvement to the current infobox might be a good idea.

The current infobox currently has the following options:

  • airline =
  • logo =
  • logo_size =
  • fleet_size =
  • destinations =
  • IATA =
  • ICAO =
  • callsign =
  • parent =
  • company_slogan =
  • founded =
  • headquarters =
  • key_people =
  • hubs =
  • secondary_hubs =
  • focus_cities =
  • frequent_flyer =
  • lounge =
  • alliance =
  • subsidiaries =
  • website =

This infobox is placed on all airline articles, and I don't feel it fits in with all airline operations. Refer to The term hub/focus city as one example of why this is, and specifically why these infoboxes are too American and Euro centric, but moreso American-centric.

My suggestion would be that we have one infobox for current airlines and one infobox for defunct airlines (and possibly even one infobox for planned/start-up airlines), with additional options in the infobox, which could include the following:

  • airline = in this field the legal name of the airline is placed, as well the legal name in the language of the country from which the airline hails. An example of this can be seen at Chukotavia or Domodedovo Airlines. On other articles, example of how this field would be are "Qantas Airways Limited" at Qantas; "Singapore Airlines Limited" at Singapore Airlines; "South African Airways (Pty) Ltd" at South African Airways, along with any names in local languages. This follows the same type of formatting that country infoboxes follow, for example.
  • logo = obviously this is where the logo goes
  • logo_size = obviously this is the size of the logo
  • fleet_size = obviously this is the number of aircraft in the fleet
  • destinations = obviously this is the number of destinations served
  • IATA = the IATA code
  • ICAO = the ICAO code
  • callsign = the airline call sign
  • parent = this field has a lot of confusion as to what actually belongs. Many articles have the legal name of the airline placed there, but this isn't actually correct. For example, Qantas has Qantas Airways Limited there, but in actual fact, Qantas is "Qantas Airways Limited trading as Qantas"; Singapore Airlines is "Singapore Airlines Limited trading as Singapore Airlines". What belongs here is the company which owns the actual airline. For example, the parent of Korean Air is the Hanjin Group.
  • shareholders = this field could be used in instances where there is no parent company as such, particularly if there are multiple major shareholders. El Al is an example of this.
  • company_slogan = Slogan of the airline
  • founded = Year founded
  • headquarters = City where airline HQ are located
  • key_people = 3 top people within the airline
  • hubs = IF the airline hubs, the main hubs of the airline
  • secondary_hubs = IF the airline hubs, the secondary hubs of the airline
  • focus_cities = IF the airline hubs, the focus cities of the airline
  • main base = This would be used in the instances that an airline does not hub. A perfect example of this is Polar Airlines. It is not a hub-and-spoke operation (as per many many airlines. Another example is El Al which does not hub (as per above link)
  • secondary bases = This follows on from the main base. From Polar Airlines all of the non-Yakutsk 'hubs' are actually secondary bases.
  • frequent_flyer = frequent flyer program name
  • lounge = name of airport lounge
  • alliance = alliance the airline is a member of
  • subsidiaries = subsidiaries of the airline
  • website = website URL of the airline

Additionally, for Russian/CIS airlines, there needs to be an additional field which is unique to these airlines, that being the internal codes. If you look at Polar Airlines and Chukotavia you will see they have no IATA or ICAO or even callsigns. But they do have internal codes, e.g. ЯП is Polar Airlines, АД is Chukotavia. Even major airlines have these codes, e.g. СУ is Aerflot, УН is Transaero, С7 is S7 Airlines. These codes are not used for international flights, but rather domestic flights and inter-CIS flights. They should be included as they are major identifiers for these airlines, and I would make a stand-alone infobox for these airlines to add this option in, but am not sure how to do this.

Throwing this open for comment, additional options, etc, etc. --Russavia 20:24, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Another field which I feel would useful is AOC, whereby the airline AOC number can be placed, with the option of the person providing a link to the AOC on the relevant CAA website. --Russavia 13:13, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
The other field which I meant to put down here but I forgot about, was which organisations an airline is a member of. At the moment, we have the 'Arab' airline articles putting in AACO in the alliance field, but the AACO is not an alliance but a trade organisation. Other organisations which can be put in such field are IATA, ATA, ATXA, AEA, HAI, European Regions Airline Association, Regional Aviation Association of Australia, Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, Association of South Pacific Airlines, African Airlines Association, Air Transport Association of Canada. This would also solve the problem of when the ATA template went up for Afd, it was mentioned that membership by an airline in the ATA should be mentioned in the article, this would take care of it, instead of having to prose it within the article. --Russavia 06:35, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I was just going to ask if we could add Bases to the Airline template. I think this is a great idea and we really do need to do something about the infobox. It is not universal for all airlines right now, and the changes proposed would really help w/ the problem. Sox23 05:04, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the addition of reference to main and secondary base would make a valuable addition, in most instances the hubs field has been used to show the airlines main base even if it is not a hub, so this would clear this up. Cant agree with the airline field having the full legal name - this is the title of the infobox and should be the same as the article name I would suggest that the legal name should be a separate field. I think it is right to clear up the use of the parent field but if it is to be used for for the company that actually owns the airline (as opposed to the airlines legal name which is used in most instances at the moment) this should be restricted to private companies. This would lead on as in the list above to needing a shareholders field for public companies - could be a problem area as shareholders could change on a daily basis and I suspect the term majority shareholder would need to be clarified on the infobox page as this could be contentious. Perhaps this discussion should be at Template talk:Infobox Airline. MilborneOne 05:53, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

List of Airline Holding Companies AfD material?

Can some others take a look at List of Airline Holding Companies I'm not sure what to do about the article, but deletion is at the top of my list. I'm not sure that the amount of work needed to clean this up is worth the effort. Vegaswikian 01:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

As most of the companies have their own articles I would suggest deleting List of Airline Holding Companies and possibly creating a cat for Airline Holding Companies - although we would have to be sure that the cat gave wiki some value. MilborneOne 11:17, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, we already have Category:Airline holding companies of the United States which is for the most part holding companies. Not sure I would want to rename that to holding companies. Vegaswikian 18:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I decided to nominate this on AfD if anyone wants to participate. Vegaswikian 02:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Air France callsign

There is an IP user who keeps changing the callsign from the official ICAO AIRFRANS to AIR FRANCE, despite comments to discuss on the talk page and cite the change he/she is changing it every few minutes. We can only revert so many time an hour! can anybody help. MilborneOne 21:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

The IP user has now used the talk page, he is still not convinced that the official document is correct and that amateur websites are a better source of info! MilborneOne 21:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletions (WP:PROD)

  • 23 September 2007 - expires 28 September
    • AirAsia awards (PROD by User:Riphamilton; PROD nominator states: "This article is spam and does not in itself meet the requirements of notability. If necessary, it can easily be merged into the main Air Asia article.") --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Historical reference

  • Previous United Airlines destinations (Expired PROD) --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:51, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Categories

Category:Airline Marketing Sub-Brands is nominated here. Vegaswikian 02:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Airlines of the United States

I just found {{Airlines of the United States}} and it seems like this adds a ton of nav boxes when used. Not so sure that it is a good idea. Also some of these take up huge amounts of vertical space making the contents useless as a navigation box.

One suggestion would be to make this one only be a nav box for the other templates.

Comments? Vegaswikian 22:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it works properly. On pages that include it, such as Alaska Airlines, only the first box appears. There seem to be random <noinclude> tags presumably making a mess of things. I'm tempted to send it to WP:TFD; it just seems to big to be useful. -- Hawaiian717 22:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I could support that if nothing changes, but would fixing as I suggested be a better way to go? Also note that some of the secondary templates appear inline in some airline articles. Vegaswikian 22:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
This also brings into question some of the breakouts in the templates like Category:Airline Marketing Sub-Brands. What exactly is that and is this a common term? I have never seen anything like this used before. Vegaswikian 22:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Oh, that. Some anonymous editor recently took upon himself to better distinguish between airlines and what he calls "marketing sub-brands", i.e. things like United Express and go! that aren't actual airlines, but brands used by other carriers. I've done my best to try and keep the mess under control. As far as the template goes, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. -- Hawaiian717 22:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
For the template, I'd like to change it to only list any sub templates and be a short navigation aid to the material rather then including it all in the article. But as I look at this, I see deleting 'Commercial Aviation in the United States', 'Airline Related Sub-Brands in the United States', 'Regional and Mainline Airline Holding Companies of the United States' where the categories are sufficient, 'Non-Mainland Aviation and Airlines Services in the states of Alaska and Hawaii in the United States' and 'Dependent regional Airlines of the United States'. Maybe the last needs to be kept as a section on the main template. Maybe I'll try gutting and cleaning up the template tonight. Based on previous dealings with the IP user, I expect an edit war to follow. Vegaswikian 00:19, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, I reduced it and cleaned it up some. We may still need to add more groups and move airlines into different groups and do some sorting. I wanted to get the basic layout cleaned up before cleaning up the details. Vegaswikian 02:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
This looks like something useful. I was wondering though if we might want to break Regionals down into one more level ("Commuter" maybe?) for the tiny (Part 121?) carriers. -- Hawaiian717 23:37, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I'll add the code for a part 121 section. However someone else will need to populate it. Vegaswikian 23:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I had it backwards; part 121 is the big airlines, 135 are the little ones. However, since I'm not up to checking to see how the airlines are certified right now, I just renamed the section "Commuter" and took a stab at populating it. -- Hawaiian717 00:07, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Appriopriate?

Check out Proposed Cathay Pacific destinations. I do believe it is a possible candidate for an AFD?--Huaiwei 13:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Uh, I doubt we really need to debate this, the page is entirely speculative and the statement at the top by the author of the page is enough warrant for a speedy deletion. NcSchu(Talk) 14:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

What do we call brands?

There is an anon editor adding terms like 'advertising sub-brands', 'marketing sub brands' and simply sub brands. These appear to be nothing but brands that are used by airlines. To avoid confusion I suggest that we only use the term 'brand' to describe these cases. One could argue that the every airline is an advertising or marketing brand so adding those terms is redundant. Vegaswikian 19:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Sub-brands etc are names that the marketing people use and would I suspect does not mean anything to most people. I agree we should just stick to 'brand'. MilborneOne 20:22, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

List of largest airlines in Oceania up for AfD

As much as I don't want to do this, I have put List of largest airlines in Oceania up for AfD, because it miserably fails WP:V and WP:OR. The other articles in this series are also clearly in breach of these policies, and depending on the outcome of this AfD (I was almost inclined to put them all up as a group) will pursue those too. It is better to have no information than non-verifiable information. --Russavia 17:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a number of world largest airlines articles, including the List of largest airlines in ... series, another one at List of world's largest airlines by fleet and the original World's largest airlines. Far to many for anybody to understand. Perhaps if we have enough lists like List of largest airline in my backyard then we can get everybodies favourite airlines on one list or another. We have already had examples of fleets being bloated by including fleets of every subsidary or associates to get them higher on one list or another! I support Russavia nomination and we should have one article like World's largest airlines with properly verified contents. MilborneOne 17:58, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
You may want to make your opinion known on the Afd. You raise a valid point, but will leave it to you if you want to make it on Afd or not. --Russavia 02:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Russavia clearly needs to check up on the editing history before jumping straight into pulling up wikipolicies as excuses for deletion, especially when I sense this is a calculated move which is linked to other content disputes. See my comments in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of largest airlines in Oceania for more details. This entire series of articles by continent was born out of pass suggestions to trim down the original World's largest airlines to a more manageable size, and simply involved porting over existing information to individual article lists. It certainly does not constitute a delibrate attempt to create microscopic lists just to get "everybodies favourite airlines on one list or another", as MilborneOne claims. As for the problems associated with aircraft fleets, please see what I have already begun doing over at List of world's largest airlines by fleet. I am in the process of converting the list into one which is directly sourced, and has clear definitions and parametres in place for a fair comparison. Also, kindly look at List of largest airlines in Asia, which I believe is a positive demonstration of the potentials of these articles. If Russavia claims that "other articles in this series are also clearly in breach of these policies", I will certainly like to question the accuracy of his statements and claims. Meanwhile, I would think this project would benefit far more if some individuals here could perhaps spend time in improving those articles to acceptable standards and assist me in this exercise, then to spend their precious time scouting for content to delete.--Huaiwei 15:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
You are of course free to question the accuracy of my claims that these lists are original research. Of course, I am also able to ask exactly how are these lists compiled? From what sources are the rankings taken? In the past some of these articles have used the respective airline WP articles as a source - this is a no-no. There is no problem in having statistics and the like, but these, particularly any rankings, need to be referenced to a reliable source. Let's take this article as an example. I don't see CHC Helicopter on that list (with 320 helicopters). If a reputable source was responsible for this list, CHC would be on that list. Or where is Air Astana on this list? Or S7 Airlines and Transaero on this list? This is how it is clearly evident that these lists are original research, and they need to be referenced to reputable sources, not compiled simply by going thru a rudimentary list of airlines and checking websites for passenger/fleet/etc numbers. --Russavia 02:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
So now that you have major issues over the entire list of statistics, it still leaves the burning question of why you nominated just one article, nominated other similar articles only after seeing numerous comments on your nominating strategies, and yet keeping them as individual nominations without basically calling up World's largest airlines for debate, for that's where the root of the problem came from in the first place. Take World's largest airlines up for AFD (and that will be its third, btw), and we shall discuss your problems with the contents over there in a single consolidated location, instead of crop spraying all over the place (and this isnt the first time you are doing this. Your recent exercise in mass deleting hotels came immediately to mind).--Huaiwei 03:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't need to Afd World's largest airlines as for the most part it is externally referenced, but I have added OR tags to relevant sections which need to be rectified, or removed completely. --Russavia 03:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
You have tagged a grand total of ONE section in that article for OR[22], all the while when you have plenty of time to revert war with others in that same article (and in the same section you tagged OR, I must add). That was a fantastic track record you have there.--Huaiwei 03:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Airline fleet articles up for Afd

Singapore Airlines fleet, Malaysia Airlines Fleet and Thai Airways International fleet have been placed for Afd, project members may want to weigh in with their opinions against or for deletion. --Russavia 12:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

What is an airline?

What exactly is a commercial airline? For the purpose of this encyclopedia, I believe that it is any subsidiary, division or other entity that markets as an airline exclusive of charter operators and operations. If we adopt too narrow of a view, then the names would not be listed as an airline in categories and the categories would lose value. Vegaswikian 17:28, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

According to the wiki article Airline An airline is a company that provides air transport services for passengers or freight. I would add that is should have a recognised operating certificate or licence (FAA, CAA etc). Not sure what you are getting at with the statement exclusive of charter operators and operations but it is not part of the definition of airline. Can you give some examples of what is causing your problem. MilborneOne 18:04, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
For one, the question of go! being considered an airline or not. As a follow on, if go! is not an airline then how do we classify all of these brands? As to the charter statement, if the project considers go! an airline, then I don't believe that the same should apply to charter operators.
Maybe a better way of asking the question might be, how do we include airline brands that are operated under the parent companies codes? Vegaswikian 19:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Had a look at go! and from what I can see it is NOT an airline it is just a marketing name for Mesa Airlines. Refer to the go! contract of carriage hidden deep in the website defines the carrier as Mesa Airlines Inc d/b/a Mesa Airlines and/or d/b/a go! I would say that the article should make it clear that is not an separate airline (although the website does a good job of covering that up). Not sure what you do about them most other cases they are part of the main airline article or for example Globespan Airways trades as flyglobespan and that is used as the article name. Perhaps the question is what do we do with airlines that use two marketing names! Still dont understand what you mean by charter operators do you mean charter airlines or tour operators? MilborneOne 20:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I was trying to limit the discussion to scheduled airline service. Hence the exclusion for charters. But I think you have provided the answer to the question. Brands, if notable are allowed to have a page. However the article needs to clearly indicate that they are brands and not an actual airline. Vegaswikian 19:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree, as you say as long it is clear they are only brands and not airlines. MilborneOne 19:32, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I've been working on some of the DRC airlines, airports, crashes etc. Most are mixed freight/passenger/maintenance operations in a very poorly regulated environment, leading to frequent tragic crashes. Many of the companies on the EU blacklist turn out to be shell companies holding wet leases on old aircraft (An-26 and Let-410 are common examples), even some that are out of license in their countries of registration. Media coverage is spotty, making it tougher to produce good citations, but the potential benefit of shining some light on the subject is large. See for example 1996 Air Africa crash, N'Dolo Airport, 2007 Africa One Antonov An-26 crash, Galaxie Corporation, Free Airlines.
Getting pedantic over 'what's an airline' would bring this to a grinding halt, as the definitions and roles seems to change with every flight, as needed. At different times, one company may be owner, operator, charter, broker, broker's agent, lessee, lessor, etc. They construct a legal rat's nest to obscure responsibility in the full expectation that something will go sideways. LeadSongDog 16:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
However if you create an article with references that unravels these changes that would be encyclopedic. May not be about an airline, but about the corporate shells. Vegaswikian 21:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Concensus needed for inclusion of codeshare destinations in articles

Over at Singapore Airlines, I have been attempting to clean up this article for the last 6 months due to the advertisement like state it is in, in addition to it containing too much unencyclopaedic information. Unfortunately, Huaiwei reverts such edits on sight claiming that concensus has been found to include them; this concensus including himself and one other editor, without taking into account the results of Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2007-01-07_Singapore_Airlines (a mediation in which he made clear he had no intention of paying any notice to) and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Airlines guidelines. The guidelines states:

Code share destinations should not be listed for the secondary carrier.

Do we as a project stand by these guidelines and can they be used as concensus to remove codeshare destinations from articles such as Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways International (and others no doubt)? In other words, do we remove codeshare destinations from articles and only list their codeshare partners?

Please indicate below if you support or oppose the guidelines, so that concensus can be gathered for once and for all.

  • Support Firstly there is the project guideline which should apply. Secondly, the argument has been made by Huaiwei that these lists of codeshare destinations are required due to the special status of Singapore being an island state and the airline requires these agreements in order to expand their reach - this is not a valid argument as all airlines require these agreements whereever possible, and I do not see lists of destinations being listed on Cathay Pacific, an airline from Hong Kong which is in a similar position of Singapore. Thirdly, it seems odd that a big list of codeshare destinations are able to be found in the main article, yet actual destinations of Singapore Airlines have to split off into a separate article - a separate article which can be Afd'ed at any time, which if successful would leave the article with no actual destinations but a list of destinations to which it doesn't even fly. --Russavia 14:27, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Support Codeshare destinations are not destinations served by the airline, merely destinations marketed by the airline. If we start including codeshare destinations, many of the major airlines will end up having similar looking destination lists, as the major alliances include broad codesharing agreements with each other. The destination lists will all end up looking the same, making them less useful. Adding codeshare destinations also means including regional carrier destinations (e.g. adding destinations served only by a United Express carrier to United Airlines destinations, something we currently don't do, either. I feel the guideline as outlined on the project page and reiterated above should be kept as is. -- Hawaiian717 15:49, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Support as per guidelines and Hawaiian717. MilborneOne 18:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Support. Look this has been discussed before and there was not consensus to change. SAI has been tagged as {{advert}} and {{POV-check}}. I think that sections like the code shares indicate that those tags should not have been removed. Many of the reasons provided for inclusion of certain material and sections is based on the uniqueness of SIA and the need to show it's range. If that class of content is not {{advert}} and {{POV-check}}, then what is? Even apparent new editors have issues with the SIA article. Vegaswikian 19:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Support - Codeshares should not be listed. WhisperToMe 06:00, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Support per guidelines and all above. → AA (talk) — 15:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Sorry for spoiling the party, but may I ask if this attempt to remove codeshared information refers to Singapore Airlines destinations or somewhere else? I would also call into question just which "guideline" is relevant if the information appears somewhere else in another format?--Huaiwei 18:12, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Reply This isn't an attempt to remove codeshare information, but an exercise to build concensus to reinforce a current project guideline to limit codeshare information only to the airlines which an airline codeshares with. And it would apply to all articles, whether they be the main airline article, a destination article, or even a stand-alone AirlineABC codeshare destination article. Codeshares as noted previously are a marketing tool used by hundreds of airlines around the world, and an encyclopaedia is not the place for doing an airlines marketing for them. Others can provide their opinion, but that is my 2кп. --Russavia 17:19, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment Kindly answer my question. To which particular codeshare information or section is this vote exercise on, and in which article is it refering to?--Huaiwei 18:09, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Support - code share flights are not flights by the carrier which is applying their codeshare number and as such should not be included. --Stewart (talk) 18:10, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. Allow me to just state here categorically, least individuals attempt to devilise me yet again should the fireball ensue in that article once again. When it comes to codeshared destinations, I fully agree that they should not be included in the airline's list of destinations, and especially in the Category:Airline destinations series of articles, for all reasons cited above, and as per the current guidelines. However, I would question any attempt to remove mention of destinations in a clearly demarcated "codeshare" section, be it as a standalone (as per the current guideline) or as a subsection. It is apparant that the same set of information can be considered acceptable, as long as it is presented in a concise manner, and does not run the risk of being confused with actual operated flights. The current guideline does not advise against this, for it does not go into details on just what form that "codeshare" section is supposed to take. If the discussion above dosent make it clear just which particular information and in which section this vote is on, I am going to consider this vote null and void.--Huaiwei 18:27, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment. Personally, I think what exists on Singapore Airlines looks acceptable. It is clearly separated from the list on Singapore Airlines destinations (which doesn't include codeshare only destinations such as Toronto), and it nicely elaborates the extent of the agreements which the airline maintains. For example, one might think that SQ codeshares on all US Airways flights, which clearly they don't (the US hub at Philadelphia, for instance, isn't there). I don't have a problem with keeping it that way. What I do object to is adding codeshare destinatinations to the regular destination lists; even if it was denoted as a codeshare, I'd prefer to keep them separate. -- Hawaiian717 18:41, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
      • Comment. Thank you for taking the time to fully consider this. I am not sure what the current format of the codeshared destination list is going to take in into the far future, but I would think a more generalised table may be suitable should the list of destination grow exponentially, or for airlines with endless lists of codeshares. For example, the table may list Airline A as codesharing on "all flights from the LAX hub", instead of actually listing every darn destination. Would this be a viable compromise for all, in the name of factual correctness, ease of maintenance, and clarity of presentation?--Huaiwei 18:54, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment as we are using Singapore Airlines as an example - nothing wrong with the textual bit that says who the airline has codeshares with - but the table detailing every codeshare route is (in my opinion) not notable and should be deleted (from all airline articles). MilborneOne 19:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment This vendetta against codeshares seems to be veering towards the illogical. Why should it not be notable when an airline codeshares with another on a key route, for example? Why should it be an issue with a simple summary table telling us which destinations are codeshared (and therefore which are not)? These in themselves serves to also tell us how extensive these codeshare arrangements are with individual airlines, be it in terms of number of destinatoins, or the markets represented by key destinations listed. The possibilities are obviously there, and are not unnotable just because one can't care less about the whole issue of codesharing.--Huaiwei 17:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Destination articles

Is there a standard to which these articles should comply? I just stumbled across Widerøe destinations in my assessing drive and it looks a lot better than, for example, Air Canada destinations. Perhaps a standard should be decided upon and articles brought up to code? - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 15:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The table format does look better. Just think that we could delete the Airport Code (which would be found in the linked article) and I suspect the aircraft type although interesting might be subject of debate, and change in some articles and could be considered not notable. Might have problems with some of the large airlines with introducing lots of flags when they are nearly as many countries as cities. So in summary I agree that the table would look better but I have reservations about the contents. MilborneOne 15:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I think this issue will open up old cans of worms once again, with two widely diverging opinions here. Currently, the minimalist group has gotten their way, but perhaps the rather bare-bone list of countries has been the reason why the entire series of destination articles has had to go through at least three rounds of AFD, if I recall correctly. There has been past proposals to introduce useful information to compliment these lists, in particular, historical information such as the date of commencement of a certain route. I believe a table format will be able to accomodate this kind of information better. At the same time, I understand the concerns amongst minimalists that too much information means difficulties in maintaining accurate lists. Aircraft types by destinations can thus be a real problem for those airlines who have a policy of changing plane types regularly (I know Cathay Pacific does this fairly often. I hope we can strike a balance here and produce a maintainable yet informative list.--Huaiwei 15:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Some good points from Huaiwei, just to add I think the table idea good be worth persuing as long as it does not end up like this one recently introduced in British Mediterranean Airways. MilborneOne 17:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Generally I'm in favor of tables. However some of the current tables used in various airline articles like here (too in your fact and formated to overly extend the size of the able making it harder to see on a screen) make me wonder if this is a wise suggestion. Airline codes were merged as a table without much of an issue. As long as a compact table with just the basic information is used, then we are probably OK. Once we start adding too much, then objections start. Starting dates serve a historical purpose and would probably be better included in a destinations table than in the history section, but it needs to be done in a way to not take the focus away from the main purpose of the table.
If we decided to include historical information, then I would agree we should do so only with citations. If a previous destinations article or section is maintained, then an entry should remain for each termination of service, seasonal service being an exception. Re introduction of service into a market would be treated as new service.
The issue of merges would play into the use of these dates. Would we use the oldest, or the acquiring airlines date, or the acquired airlines date? Also consider what should be done when you have a complicated break with no clear history like when two or more airlines merges, then later split into several different airlines? Do all of them list as the start the same oldest date from the first two airlines or do they start with the post split dates. We need a standard way to list historical information. Vegaswikian 18:37, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
As to the format of Widerøe destinations. We probably don't need the airport codes. To the average reader this is aviation geek talk. Aircraft change all of the time including regular substitutions. How would we show a hypothetical case when an airline normally services an airport from three hubs using a different aircraft from each hub? Would we have all three aircraft listed? How about if two of those used different aircraft on slower days say using a 737 for a 757 one day a week? Would we be listing all of these? I think we simply avoid problems by leaving off the aircraft column. Leaving a remarks section is good, but we should also include a status column for hub, focus city and seasonal types of information. These should continue to be formated with the existing guidelines. Vegaswikian 18:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
On the use of tables. Previous discussions over tables opposed useful tables that were well structured on the grounds that many editors would have problems updating those tables since they were not simple entries with all of the data on one 'line'. Even the current Widerøe destinations has a formatting issue. Not a deal breaker, but something to consider. Vegaswikian 19:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I have recently reformatted destination lists for Aeroflot and Domodedovo International Airport into a collapsable table inline in the article. I saw this done by an editor on Belavia, and it looks good in my opinion. Also, I would keep terminated destinations out, as it would be near on impossible to source this for some airlines---prime example, it would be impossible to source all terminated destinations of Aeroflot due to the sheer number of destinations they used to fly to---additionally, IMO terminated destinations are not encyclopaedic (some would say we are already pushing it with listing current destinations), and they don't belong on WP --Russavia 16:58, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Just had a look at the links provided by Russavia, for some reason I dont like the look of them. But to be fair it is probably because all the content is centered. Dont particularly like the fact that the continents are broken down into smaller and smaller bits like Northern Europe, Southern Europe etc. That apart it is probably a good starting point. MilborneOne 18:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I think we should keep the breakouts by continent as in the current lists. This was a consensus decision so the top level is the continents. As to the format, the country probably needs to be included on every row in the table format, otherwise it looks odd. Centering of the text, with the possible exception of the continents, also looks odd. I'd also like to see the column widths reduced by allowing the size to be determined by the browser and let it format accordingly. I think this problem is caused by using a col span of 13 for the continent headings. I made some adjustments, see how they look. Vegaswikian 19:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Looks better - it was the text centering that made it look odd. Do we need the continents broken down as terms like Northern Europe which are not an exact definition and might be subject to constant amending. The colspan should have been 4 (they are only 4 columns) but it has made no difference. MilborneOne 19:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
The way it is set up, a long comment will force the other columns to reduce in size. Allowing the table to float to 90% of the available width means that white space is needed to fill out the columns. I'm not sure if we want to adjust this down or not. If it turns out to be the guideline template, then it needs to work here and on tables that require more text in the notes column. So I think this may be the best we can do keeping in mind that this is a general table. If consensus here is to go in this direction, I would convert it to a template and remove the collapsible attribute making it optional. Vegaswikian 19:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
OK all my issues have been answered so I am happy to support as per your latest changes. MilborneOne 20:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, can any of you point out which table are you working on right now as a demonstration of the proposed table? Thanks!--Huaiwei 15:33, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Aeroflot. MilborneOne 17:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I fail to see the problem with including terminated destinations as per Russavia's comments. It seems to be an extreme case of historical cencenship if anything which no longer exists today should not be accorded some level of relevance as to be recorded in an encyclopedia. And to argue that no article content should exist because of sheer volume in a handful of articles is probably suggesting we should not have an article on anything superlative in this encyclopedia. Difficulties in finding information for some articles is hardly a deciding factor. Wikipedia cant possibly have sources for every entity on Earth, so shall we delete the entire project altogether? Finally, perhaps Russavia may consider refraining from constantly using Aeroflot as the primary determinant in deciding what goes in and what goes out. It suggests that his comments are biased to begin with.--Huaiwei 15:33, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I thought we were trying to gain a consensus about the format not terminated destinations. There would be nothing wrong with using the proposed format for destinations no longer served, although perhaps we should have the discussion of their notability in another talk topic and at least agree on the table format for current destinations. MilborneOne 17:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
As stated above, I supported a similar solution for terminated destinations when there are reliable sources for the dates. I did not add dates for starting service to the current table proposal since no one has addressed the questions concerning the dates that we would use above. Without answering those questions, dates should not be included since an ending date without an option for the start date is kind of meaningless. So if we want to have a table of discontinued services, we really need to add th edate service started to the current proposal. Then the only change that would be needed when service ends is to move the entry to a second table that adds the termination date. I don't believe that mixing the two in a single table is productive. Vegaswikian 18:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I was addressing Russavia's views on terminated destinations, which will potentially form part of this table anyway. I would propose having a single destination list, with a "Launch" and "Terminated" column, thus allowing all destinations past and present to be listed together. We can work out on the details on the dating issue later.--Huaiwei 02:51, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

As per the changes made by Vegaswikian, I too support the format, however, I would prefer to leave them as a collapsable list (so long as this is inline with WP policies?) --Russavia 02:03, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I personally do not find the (current) collapsable list asthetically pleasing. Further more, they are a step backwards in maintaining articles of reasonable size, as well as avoiding impossibly long edit history lists. Let's decide on just what kind of information we want first before progressing on to issues of formatting and asthetics.--Huaiwei 02:51, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm also not fond of the collapsable lists - I don't think the current setup is a problem...Sox23 21:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment: I note with alarm Russavia's aggresive attempts to turn Aeroflot destinations into a redirect page, enforcing a perception that his collapsable table presented in Aeroflot has been finalised and agreed upon. I also note his sudden interest in going through practically all articles in Category:Airline destinations and tagging all articles with {{Unreferenced}} tags (when he could instead spent time to insert the references himself), which kicked off in earnest just moments after the revert warring over at Aeroflot destinations. I sense storm clouds ahead.--Huaiwei 18:03, 17 October 2007 (UTC) Two cases in point:

  • 1) Yes, Aeroflot destinations is now a redirect to Aeroflot for the following, very simple reasons. The list currently exists in Aeroflot, and is now fully referenced.
  • 2) As mentioned in one of the reverts, if the collapsable list is not agreed upon, then a reversion is very very easy to do. As the destination list article page stood it was unreferenced and orphaned. Additionally, the insertion by yourself of the reference to Polyot-Sirena was erroneous, as the destinations on the destination article were not cross-referenced for what was on Polyot-Sirena.

It should also be noted that the guidelines of this project do not insist that there should be a separate page for destination lists, but that there can be a separate page. Additionally, it should also be noted that other editors have incorporated these collapsable lists into the main airline article, British Mediterranean Airways being one, Belavia being another (I did the Aeroflot article after seeing Zscouts edit on the Belavia article. As to my tagging of article, it is not my sole responsibility to find sources for every piece of unsourced information on Wikipedia, it is the responsibility of editors who are adding information to provide this information, and if you anyone thinks that I am going to scour through hundreds of articles to ensure that the thousands upon thousands of destinations are verified, then they are sorely mistaken. If this project says that such destination lists are essential for the aims of the project, then these lists need to be referenced, and this needs to be a collaborative effort, not left up to a single editor to do. --Russavia 18:59, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Two cases (and more) in point:
  • 1) Now of course the list at Aeroflot destinations is now at Aeroflot. Did Russavia obtain concensus before moving the information there, and did he get concensus to therefore turn Aeroflot destinations into a redirect? Absolutely not. In fact, most would probably not notice the little adventures going on there if not for this discussion!
  • 2) If a reversion is that easy, I suppose Russavia imagines it as a mere cut-and paste operation between this table and the old Aeroflot destinations format? Obviously that is not the case. Aeroflot destinations is unreferenced and orphaned? Then add the neccesary reference, which Russavia already has. Orphaned? It is linked to the Aeroflot article, so how could it be orphaned? Insertion of the reference is wrong? No it is not wrong to add a more accurate reference. He just need to update that article to reflect the source, which he obstinately refuses to do.
The guidelines are pretty clear on destination lists: "Once an airline has more then 10 destinations, especially international ones, they could be listed in a stand alone article." Russavia can play around with the word "could" all he likes, but if Aeroflot flies to 11 international destinations, we could probably let this pass. Does it? So if a destination list the size of Aeroflot's could remain in its own article as per his interpretation, I suppose we could simply merge every article in Category:Airline destinations back to their articles too? Is this what the guidelines are intending to achieve?
But merge the destinations back in what format? The guidelines still say they should follow Airline destinations, and that guideline makes no mention of the collapsible table. Does Aeroflot follow the current guidelines? No. Did Russavia obtain concensus before making the change? No. Did he obtain concensus as a result of the above discussion? Still no. So just where is his justification for revert-warring over his unprescribed format?
And last but not least, if someone thinks that he has the moral grounds to comb through hundreds of articles to plant {{Unreferenced}} tags, and he can abstain from making an effort to correct the problem himself, he has to be sorely mistaken. As he says, this is a collaborative effort, so why is there no call for assistance in this talkpage, for instance, until I sounded the alarm bells here? There are more ways than one to get people's attention, and Russavia has chosen to use a more provocative method. This uncontrolled habit of tag insertions by Russavia has to stop. They degrade the quality of these articles, and unnecesarily reminds any would-be user of the poor quality of wikipedia articles, even if the destination lists are actually correct over 95% of the time. And come to think of it, what makes him think that the insertion of references is going to mean no errors in any of those articles? Is it neccesary for him, or anyone, to comb through thousand and thousands of destinations before they can insert a simple reference link? Are wikipedia editors incapable of updating the lists afterwards?
From Russavia's comments above, and the chain of actions he has taken, I would just like to kindly remind him once again, that wikipedia is simply not the place for renegades, made worse especially when he chooses to make an undiscussed change, and then apply it across numerous articles without a word of discussion. This is simply not the first time he has done this, and he has been warned before. It is one thing about being WP:Bold. It is another when someone boldly makes a site-wide change when he knows there is some opposition to this moves. And I find this all the more ironic, considering he appears desperate to keep the Singapore Airlines article in check and in full compliance with any guideline he can think of, and habitually cites the need for consistency as excuses to revert war over the most trival of details. So just what allows Aeroflot to depart from those guidelines in this instance? If the same change has taken place in the Singapore Airlines article, would he allow it?--Huaiwei 01:12, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Yawn to most of your diatribe. But I will answer this, what allow Aeroflot destinations to be merged into Aeroflot, how about the fact that the article as it stood didn't supply a single reference, which inline with WP policy, it should be removed. Also Huaiwei, the only other thing I have to say is that I have already stated clearly that it can be re-instated (BUT NOT IN ITS PREVIOUS FORM) if the decision is to do so. --Russavia 04:35, 21 October 2007 (UTC)