Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports/Archive 6

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Contents

Airports in Brazil, two questions

  1. In response to a question I just created Aerodromo Nacional de Aviacao. Obviously that isn't the English name but I wan't sure if is should be "National Aerodrome of Aviacao" or "Aviacao National Aerodrome". Can somebody move it to the correst place? Thanks.
  2. How are Brazilian airports listed? It says they are FAA codes. Is that the Brazilian FAA or the US one? Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi! Just stumbled upon Aerodromo Nacional de Aviacao and moved it to Aeródromo Nacional de Aviação. Updating the links got me here. Regarding your question, brazilian airports have ICAO and IATA codes (List of airports in Brazil). While both codings are approved by the FAA and it's brazilian counterpart, ANAC, neither are maintained by them. Ben Stone 09:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Alabama International Airport Authority

I recently added an article for the Alabama International Airport Authority which was responsible for the development of a plan for a never built facility within the state of Alabama. Does this article fall within the scope of this project since it deals with a never-built facility? Patriarca12 15:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say that it probably does. - Aerobird Target locked - Fox One! 13:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Detroit Airports

Question: Should we disambiguate Detroit's two airports? I realize that Detroit City airport is served by only one carrier (that offer commercial service), but Detroit still has two airports and that may cause confusion for those who don't know the difference between Detroit-City and Detroit-Metro. Detroit City Airport has been served by commercial service in the past. Before moving their operations to Detroit-Metro, Southwest Airlines once served the airport.

Example:

Should we change it to the format below?:

A similar question came up elsewhere. The disambig is really only necessary if the airports have the slightest chance of being confused. No one is going to think the article is referring to Detroit City Airport. Most people from outside of Detroit haven't heard of it, and those from Detroit know the difference. The disambiguation really shouldn't be used if there is one airport that completely dominates service to the city and is the first (and probably only) airport that comes to mind when one mentions the city. There's no disambig for Singapore, although Seletar Airport has some commercial service. If an airline flies to Detroit City, put Detroit-City in the list, but for other carriers, just leave it as Detroit. DB (talk) 02:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Another example would be Vancouver (Int'l vs Coal Harbour Seaplane Base) DB (talk) 02:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Alright Sox23 02:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Los Angeles Airports

Question: Should we disambiguate between Los Angeles airports? Now that Ontario Airport has changed its name to LA/Ontario Airport, should it be Los Angeles-Ontario and Los Angeles-LAX or in the least should it be Ontario (CA) because people can also be confused with Ontario, Canada? LA-ONT is a sizeable airport and does has more than a "low" population of airlines and destinations served from the facility: Example:

or

  • Southwest Airlines (Chicago-Midway, Las Vegas, Los Angeles-Ontario, Phoenix)??? Any opinions? --Sox23 22:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd say go with Ontario (CA). While it's in the LA metro region, it's still a separate city. This is similar to saying Newark instead of New York-Newark. DB (talk) 01:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we need to disambiguate Ontario. There is no commercially-served "Ontario Airport" in Canada and thus no confusion because no other location is listed as Ontario on any airport destination screen. This would be like disambiguating Oakland because there's an "Oakland County Airport" (PTK) in Michigan or disambiguating Las Vegas because there's a "Las Vegas Municipal Airport" in Las Vegas, New Mexico (LVS). Or disambiguating Burlington because there's a "Burlington Airport" in Burlington, Iowa (BRL) and a "Burlington Municipal Airport" in Burlington, Wisconsin (BUU). The list goes on. It is unnecessary and without precedent to disambiguate cities that do not have a corresponding commercially-served airport with the same city name.
Furthermore, "CA" is useless as a disambiguation term in this case because that abbreviation is also used for Canada in many contexts. Saying "Ontario (CA)" could mean the city of Ontario, California or it could mean the province of Ontario, Canada. Our own entry at CA confirms this, being itself geographically ambiguous. If you really wanted to disambiguate it usefully, you'd have to say "Ontario (Calif.)" or something like that, and that's pretty fugly. FCYTravis 06:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
So the alternative is to to leave it at plain "Ontario"? That doesn't work either. Disambigutioans don't have to be pretty to be useful. At least with saying "Ontario (CA)", only Canadians will be confused. But, using (Calif.) might confuse people who think it's a mis-spelling of caliph. We could just spell out "Ontario (California)", but that might anger Canadians who think Americans are suggesting that their province is just a part of the US now,, California in particular. - BillCJ 07:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

- BillCJ 07:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Um, only Canadians would be confused? Please don't be US-centric.
Why doesn't leaving it at plain "Ontario" work? There is no other airport called "Ontario" with any commercial service. There is no other place called "Ontario" listed as a destination for any airline anywhere - all flights into the province of Ontario arrive into airports named for the city locations. Go to AirCanada.ca and type "Ontario" - what comes up first? Ontario, California (ONT)... followed by seven commercial airports *in* Ontario, none of which are actually named Ontario. Again, what you're suggesting would require that we rethink our entire disambiguation and disambiguate dozens of other cities needlessly.
Heck, let's just put the full state and country name after every city destination and quintuple the size of the destination listings. There's a London airport in Ontario - so let's start saying London-Heathrow (UK) too, because someone might not know that Heathrow Airport is in London, UK and not London, Ontario. There's a Cairo, Illinois airport (KCIR) so we better start disambiguating Cairo (Egypt) too. There's a "Paris Regional Airport" in Illinois, too - better change all those Paris listings to Paris (France). Oh, and there's even a Newark Municipal Airport in Illinois. Atlanta Municipal Airport in Texas. See how quickly this gets completely absurd? FCYTravis 07:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
There are several other cities listed with state codes in that list. By your arqument they shouldn't be there either. I expect to see that you have removed them also.
By the way, that comment, and the latter half of my preseeding comments, were meant to be absurd. I was illustrating my point that leaving out the state code in this case is absurd, because CA is an accepted postal code for California, and is accepted by Canada Post as such. We don't have to go to extremes in disabmiguating, but we don't have to be ridiculous about zxcluding it either. How many people looking at this list are going to know there's no other city named Ontario with an airport? Probably less than know CA is the postal code for California. I would actually prefer if the state code was "CF", but they didn't ask me. Alabama and Alberta both have "L"s and "B"s in thee names, but AL is for Alabama, and AB is for Alberta. Birmingham (AL) is in that list also, but should we take it out because some people (from anywhere) might mistakenly think it's in Alberta, not knowing thre's no Birmingham there with an airport? If you don't like the fact that California's postal abbreveiation is CA, try to get it changed in the real world. But as long as the code is accepted by Canada Post, I can't see any real objection to using it here. - BillCJ 19:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, all of those other cities are disambiguated for a specific reason: There is another location with exactly the same name which receives commercial air service. San Jose, California (SJC) must be disambiguated from San Jose, Costa Rica (SJO). Birmingham, Alabama (BHM) must be disambiguated from Birmingham, United Kingdom (BHX). Portland, Oregon (PDX) must be disambiguated from Portland, Maine (PWM), and so on. There is no airport destination location called Ontario, Canada, and thus it is not necessary to disambiguate it from Ontario, California. FCYTravis 05:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It is extremely difficult, if at all possible, to get confused with Ontario, Canada (a huge province that cannot have one single airport) and Ontario, California (a small, viable city/destination), so I don't see a need to make things complicated. --210physicq (c) 21:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Potential for Airport Portal

Would there be an interest for an Airport Portal? I can get that started up, it seems like a logical idea to complement the Project. Rob110178 03:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

We already have an aviation portal. Or...? --210physicq (c) 03:27, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


External Aviation Weather Link for Selected Canadian Airports

I would like to add a Aviation Weather Link for about 60 selected airports in Canada from this site:

For example the CYYZ (Toronto Pearson) Weather link would look like this:

The link contains current Terminal Aerodrome Forecast and METAR aviation weather as well as some other relevant weather links. If you have any comments let me know here. DSatYVR 07:25, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose: I do not know what others think, but personally, I have a problem with it linking to a commercial site. If we can link it to information provided by Environment Canada or some other official source, I wouldnt have a problem. Rob110178 01:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Comment: I don't think you can link to the METAR/TAF directly. You can get the public forcast/weather but this is the best that you can get for aviation weather. At one time the raw data was available but that was as observed in the old format and not in METAR. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 12:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Comment: Seems like in lots of countries you can't get anything but 'commercial weather', and they've tried to do that in the US, too (prohibit the NWS from providing to the public any services that commerical vendors could provide! Yech.). - Aerobird Target locked - Fox One! 02:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses Folks. Rob110178, I understand your concerns. It is not my intent to try and slip commercial content on to Wikipedia. Of the 30+ links on the ac network weather webpage, 1 link can be defined as "commercial" IMO and it is there for a specific reason. The ac network weather website is setup as a weather briefing site for off-duty pilots on layover and the 1 commercial link allows access to aircanada webcheckin for those pilots who need to obtain boarding passes to reposition as passengers IE 'deadhead' to pickup flights elsewhere in the system. The rest of the 30+ links are non-commercial in nature. They provide useful weather information from a variety of non-commercial sources. For example the TAF/METAR information comes from the NOAA server in the US, and the RVR/Runway/Navigation-aid status data is from Nav-Canada. The weather chart, satellite imagery are from NOAA, Jeppesen, Environment Canada and Nav Canada and other non-commercial sources. I think the information provided on the website would be of interest to Wikipedia users and add another dimension to the individual airport pages. I am not interested in getting into a spam-link battle so I apperciate all of you voicing your concerns. Thanks again for your input. Regards, DSatYVR 17:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Image Task Force and Category

Would there be an interest in setting up an image task force so that we can identify airports that require images? We could modify the AirportProject header to provide an option for this and create a subsequent category so that we can give some members another focus on our Airport Pages. Many pages that I have seen could use (more/any) images. Rob110178 01:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Userbox

I have modified the userbox to include a category for members of WP:Airport... Please let me know what you think... Rob110178 01:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Subsidiaries

So over at Kuala Lumpur International Airport some people are insisting that because Jetstar is owned by Qantas, its flights should be listed like this:

  • Qantas
    • Jetstar (Sydney)

But this is a Jetstar-coded flight operated by Jetstar for Jetstar. Qantas doesn't fly to KLIA, so I think this is highly confusing, pointless and a dangerous slippery slope. Am I alone? Jpatokal 03:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, this is the format for all the articles. Parent airline company then subsidiary airline below it. That is how the way it is. It may be confusing to some as some may go to Qantas website, but well... Terence Ong 15:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that's how it was ever intended to be... If the subsidiary is operating the flight on behalf of, or in cooperation with the parent, then that makes sense. However if there are two distinct brands then it does not.
Think things through... where does it stop? Is bmi a subsidiary of Lufthansa because LH own 30% of them (I should pick a much better example, but hey). Ta/wangi 16:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree. If the airline has its own operating certificate and has operations independent of the parent, it should be listed on its own. Spanair and Blue1 are not listed under SAS, although they are both subsidiaries. I guess USAirways/America West is an exception to the operating certificate rule, but they're in the process of merging that. An airline such as Lufthansa Cityline or Ted by United should be listed under the parent, since its operations are integrated with the parent carrier. DB (talk) 23:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
In the case of BMI/Lufthansa, LH only owns 30% of bmi, and thus thats not a 100% fully owned subsidiary. Its not like the cases of UA/Ted, and QF/Jetstar in which the subsidiary is wholly owned by the parent company. Furthermore, you can look up Jetstar's flights in the Qantas website, and on the Jetstar's website as well. A case where 2 airline companies may be considered separate is Jetstar Asia Airways, which is 49% owned by Qantas and 51% owned by Singapore companies. Therefore Jetstar Asia operates separately as a sister airline, as it is not a fully owned subsidiary of Qantas. --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 23:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
For a comparison, Singapore Airlines and SilkAir. SilkAir was 100% a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. SilkAir flies to the places where Singapore Airlines do not fly to (i.e Kuching, Surabaya, etc). This is the same thing as Jetstar Airways and Qantas. Jetstar was set up to complement Qantas. Jetstar Airways gets the routes where Qantas do not fly to. Hence, it is stressed again that Jetstar Airways should be put under Qantas (even though Qantas does not fly there). --Zack2007 00:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
So Spanair should be listed under Scandinavian Airlines System? DB (talk) 01:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't matter one bit who owns an airline, the destination list isn't there to illustrate the relationship between airline companies, it's there to list who flys where. It only makes sense to list airlines under other airlines if they are operating under a franchise agreement (or "dba" in the US) or are operating in close cooperation. Ta/wangi 01:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. Basically, the airline at question should have its own line on the list in the article if it operates on its own. In the OAG timetables or the airline's website or any other source of schedules, if it has a listing for Airline ABC, then its a separate airline for all intents and purposes. If it says Airline ABC operated by Airline XYZ (or Airline XYZ dba Airline ABC), then and only then should it be listed together with the parent carrier. DB (talk) 01:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Close cooperation is in question now. I found that Jetstar is in close cooperation as it is set up to help Qantas to fly to those not viable by Qantas. In other words, Qantas have a lot of say in where Jetstar can fly. This is similar to SilkAir. Let say if we want to list Jetstar Airways on its own without Qantas as a heading, would it be the same with Silk Air (without Singapore Airlines heading?). My thought --Zack2007 02:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The issue is not "cooperation", the issue is who flies there. Silk Air should also be listed independently, because Silk Air also has its own brand, its own IATA code, its own booking system (MI flights don't show up on SQ's website and vica versa), etc.

More to the point, I think you should never have a listing like this:

  • XYZ
    • ABC (Foo, Bar)

It should just be:

  • ABC (Foo, Bar)

Now, if ABC is a subsidiary of XYZ and XYZ also flies there, then it makes some sense to list them like this:

  • XYZ (Baz, Quux)
    • ABC (Foo, Bar) Jpatokal 02:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't know about never. Subsidiaries not operating as independent carriers should be listed under their parents:
DB (talk) 08:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok maybe we should have some sort of guideline agreed by all on whether a subsidiary should be under its parent company or not. I agree with Jpatokal. If they fly independently, with different management, website, image, etc, (Jetstar Airways, Silk Air, etc), it should then be listed independetly. But if they are so dependent to each other like Swiss European Air Lines which is tightly related to Swiss International Air Lines (They share the same booking website, etc). What say you? We need to standardise this to avoid future arguments. --Zack2007 09:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Jetstar is a interesting situation, Jetstar Australia proclaims themselves as a part of the Qantas group on their planes, Jetstar flights DO APPEAR on Qantas' website. But regarding subsidiaries, I have to say I agree with Jpatokal's earlier proposal. If the subisidiary carrier is the only carrier to the port, and the parent doesnt fly there, then list it separately as:
  • Carriername (Destination1, Destination2)
as opposed to.
  • Parentname
    • Carriername (Destination1, Destination2)..
If the Parent company & the wholly owned subsidiarys flew there, then list it under the parent company.(as Jpatokal had outlined above) I have to agree that there needs to be a consensus on subsidiaries to avoid any arguments in future. --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 09:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
There already was a consensus on how to list dependent subsidiaries (Swiss European, Lufthansa Cityline, etc.). It's
  • Parent
    • Subsidiary (destinations)
Since most people recognize the name of the parent rather than the name of the subsidiary (i.e. most people don't say they're flying Air Canada Jazz or American Eagle; they say they're flying Air Canada or American), the parent name should remain.
However, independent subsidiaries (SilkAir, Spanair, Jetstar) should always be listed separately, regardless of whether the parent carrier flies to the destination. They are separate airlines with separate operating certificates, regardless of who owns who. DB (talk) 18:59, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I think I like the sound of that, DB. So dependent subsidiaries (Swiss European Air Line, Thai AirAsia, Air Canada Jazz) should be listed together in two lines, while independent subsidiary (Spanair, SilkAir, Jetstar Airways, Jetstar Asia Airways) should be listed separately, even if they both fly in the same destination. What say others? --Zack2007 00:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Jetstar Asia Airways is only part owned (49%) by QF, so they dont apply here. But as I said before, Jetstar Australia is an interesting situation, as they proclaim themselves as a proud member of the Qantas group on their planes, and their flights DO APPEAR on the Qantas website as well. Also, their main aim is to fly to destinations that their parent QF dont, this despite having separate IATA codes (JQ). --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 01:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

So now we need to define "independent" vs "dependent". How about own IATA code and own brand identity in order to be independent? This should handle all the above cases nicely. As for Jetstar, I think it's pretty obvious that in terms of a the flyer experience, they're an independent experience in terms of everything except the cross-booking thing. Jpatokal 06:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it is a bit more complex then "independent" vs "dependent". It has more to do with who 'markets' the flight. So as a general rule, 'express' flights are generally marketed and sold by the company that owns them or they are under contract to. This is the name that the passenger will be looking for at the airport to check in at. A complex example is Mesa Airlines that provides regional service for some airlines, operates under their own name and they also operate an airline under another brand. I suspect that there is a very simple definition that should work, I just don't know what it is. Vegaswikian 07:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
How about published schedules? If the airline has its own published schedules (Spanair, SilkAir, etc.), list it separately. If it's listed as Parent operated by Subsidiary/Contractor, list it under the parent. DB (talk) 03:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Some Airlines (with separate IATA code) have their schedules published on their parent's site. Jetstar Airways Australia and Qantas being an example (with Jetstar flights appearing at Qantas.com.au). --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 07:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Right, but the difference is that Jetstar also has its schedules published on its own site and it's listed with OAG as Jetstar, not "Qantas operated by Jetstar" (other airlines such as Spanair are also listed independently with the major GDSs, but it appears that Jetstar doesn't publish schedules with them since I couldn't find any flights on Expedia or Travelocity). If it is listed as Qantas operated by Jetstar, it's just a codeshare. The schedules for a carrier such as Swiss European, however, are only listed on Swiss International's site, and the GDSs and OAG list the flights only as "Swiss operated by Swiss European". DB (talk) 21:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
It doesnt list it as codeshare, the Qantas site lists Jetstar flights as Jetstar flights (eg JQ543 to Foo, etc). After all JQ's livery on the Airbus 330s do say "A QantasGroup airline" on it. --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 02:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit confuse of what direction this discussion is heading. Someone please simplify it. Thank you. --Zack2007 06:26, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not really heading anywhere, but as the edit war on KLIA is flaring up again I think we need to bring this to a close. I think DB said it best so far: Basically, the airline at question should have its own line on the list in the article if it operates on its own. In the OAG timetables or the airline's website or any other source of schedules, if it has a listing for Airline ABC, then its a separate airline for all intents and purposes. If it says Airline ABC operated by Airline XYZ (or Airline XYZ dba Airline ABC), then and only then should it be listed together with the parent carrier. Is this unambiguous enough to adopt as a guideline? Jpatokal 03:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
This is still a complex decision we have to go through, as the likes of Pacific Blue, Ted (United), etc operate as separate brands but use the same IATA code (DJ - Virgin BLue & UA- United respectively), and you got those that are fully 100% owned subsidiaries of other airlines (either with separate certificate or not) in their home nations (eg Jetstar Airways wholly owned by Qantas). The former could be argued to be listed under their parent, while the later, should have the same argument IF the parent company flies to the same airports as that subsidiary.
Wholly owned subsidiaries in which the subsidiary is based overseas, with their own certificate/IATA code/etc should remain listed separately.
If we're going to separate subsidiaries, then you may as well apply it across the board considering the complex ownership and operational issues of each subsidiary. --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 06:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Are we moving to the guidance that if the airline has its own code and if it runs the flight under that code then it would be listed at the top level? If so, that could be confusing where a regional operates a flight from a city under its name and also operated flights as an express for other carriers. Don't know if that actually occurs anywhere. However consider the issues when HP and US merged. This statement would say that both are listed at the top level. But Ted would always be listed under United. Vegaswikian 08:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I dont think we are even near a consensus, considering the differing operational and management requirements vary by wholly owned subsidiary. As was said earlier regional affiliates may operate some services under their own brand, yet operate other services in the same IATA code as their parent (eg United Airlines affiliates).
Another thing, there are a few similar situations to USAirways and America West Airlines; Jetstar Asia Airways and Valuair, in which both are wholly owned by the same company (Singapore-based Orange Star), yet both operate under separate certficates but the later (Valuair) pulling out of various Jetstar Asia destinations to avoid cannabalising each other. --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 13:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Airports in Scotland template

Template:Airports in Scotland has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page.

In essence I feel it is redundant to {{Airports in the United Kingdom}} which lists and UK airports with scheduled or chartered service. This template duplicates the many Scottish airports on that template, plus adds many GA and RAF fields. Aviation in the UK is governed by the CAA, which is a UK-wide body. Thanks/wangi 20:49, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Airport stations again

Sorry. Long forgotten, having some expansion and now quite frequently included not by me. Going back on what i said recently, there is a template on UK airport stations created by me. Do you think it will be okay or is, say, innovative or something? Here it is.

v • d • e
Stations serving UK airports
Railway stations
Metro stations

It is not to be like a travel brochure like the other one. What do you think? Simply south 00:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Article names

Should the project page take a position on the name to be used for airport articles? This comes up over a discussion on renaming the Midway Airport article. While common name is a guideline, for major facilities like an airport, it would make sense to list the article under the formal name.

On one FAA page the airport with abbreviations is Chicago Midway International, it is also know as Chicago Midway Airport and Chicago Midway International Airport with an additional suggestion to rename to Midway International Airport. The article currently uses Chicago-Midway International Airport in the introduction.

Comments please.

Vegaswikian 23:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The WP standard is for common names. I've been pushing for name changes on some other articles. I think Midway is the most appropriate name. Some other airports that need reviewing are Dakar, Port Louis, Calcutta/Kolkata, several airports in South America, several in Mexico, etc. The titles are way too long and I seriously doubt that's how most people refer to them. DB (talk) 03:35, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
That's what redirects are for. Sox23 03:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
No, redirects are for variants on the title. For example, Boston Airport (which no one calls it) redirects to Logan International Airport. They are not intended to allow the primary page violate naming policy. DB (talk) 03:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes but Boston Airport is supposidly one of the titles that most people refer to the airport as while the actual title, Logan International Airport is the title of the article. Sox23 03:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
And you don't know that most people don't refer to BOS as "Boston Airport" Sox23 03:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Well since I'm from outside of Boston and I've used the airport countless times and I've never heard anyone refer to it as "Boston Airport" and since the majority of users of the airport are of course from the Boston area, I can say that most people don't refer to it as such. The commonly used title is "Logan Airport" or "Logan International". DB (talk) 03:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

You guys should really be commended for your uniquely non-annoying project tag logos. Those things are just incredibly overdone about 95% of the time.--Pharos 19:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Airport article names revisited

I think we should come up with a general guideline for airport articles, rather than looking at them one-by-one. I've already provided my opinion on the Midway Airport case, but there are a number of airports with excessively long names that clearly violate WP:NAME (requiring commonly used names). Maybe there should be a WP:NAME guideline specific to airports, but as it stands now, several need to be changed. I'd say the worst is Dakar (Dakar-Yoff-Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport), but there are several others that are pretty bad. DB (talk) 02:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Chicago/Rockford International Airport seems amusing to me especially since it's 90 miles from Chicago. I'm not a big fan of using the slash (/) in the article name, but I assume that they named it that based on airnav and FAA docs. Is there any guideline on using the slash? --Dual Freq 02:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Airports should be at one of the official names. Either the one the airport authority uses or the one the governing agency uses. To use the common name, would I suspect, end up with multiple airports being at articles without the word "airport" in the title or at an article called the airport. Some examples, London Heathrow Airport is probably more commonly called plain Heathrow (it's a redirect to London Heathrow Airport). Toronto Pearson International Airport (airport authority) is also known as Toronto/Lester B. Pearson International Airport (governing agency) but is more probably called Pearson or Toronto Pearson. The Canadian Region of Waterloo International Airport (airport authority) is also known as Kitchener/Waterloo Regional Airport (governing agency) but is likely called Waterloo but then the Waterloo Regional Airport (in the US) is also probably called Waterloo. Where there is only one airport in the area then it's probably known as the airport. That's where I work, not as you would have thought at Cambridge Bay Airport, and "the airport" is the common name in Cambridge Bay. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 03:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
And as I said before, this is an encyclopedic website and the titles of any article should be their correct name! We should make a section in WP:NAME to include this because it is assanine to list the wrong title of something. A.K.A.: Midway Airport is not the correct name of Chicago Midway International Airport! Sox23 03:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Found this in researching another naming issue today. This may already be covered at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision). Vegaswikian 03:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Which is accompanied by this. DB (talk) 03:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Also, what qualifies as "correct"? Naming conventions are a policy, not a guideline, which means they have to be followed. The policy pretty clearly states that common names should be used. Midway is a minor issue - the alternate title only adds the word "International". Others, such as Dakar, are totally unacceptable. Many article titles use the "official" name, which is never used by anyone, including the airport's website. If you want to use names found on airport websites, then be consistent about it. In this case, Midway would be Midway International Airport (without the Chicago), Buenos Aires EZE would be Ezeiza International Airport, Cordoba would be Cordoba International Airport, Santiago would be Santiago Airport. I could go on, but you get the point. DB (talk) 03:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions is a "policy" as the box says on the top of the page. But the first sentence says "Naming conventions are a list of guidelines on how to appropriately create and name pages.", so it's also just a set of "guidelines". Then the second sentence says "It is important to note that these are conventions, not rules carved in stone.", so we can decide on a particular set of conventions/guidlines/policy ourselves for airports. Chicago Midway International Airport rendered as a common name would probably be plain "Midway" as most people will drop the word airport. To answer your examples. When you refer to "Cordoba Airport" do you mean Ingeniero Ambrosio L.V. Taravella International Airport (Córdoba, Argentina) or Cordoba Airport (Córdoba, Spain). When you refer to "Santiago Airport" do you mean Santiago de Compostela Airport (Santiago de Compostela, Spain) or Del Caribe International General Santiago Marino Airport (Porlamar, Isla Margarita, Venezuela) or Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (Santiago, Chile) or perhaps one of the airports that serve one of the multiple other places called Santiago? Common names will not work for airports and in fact are not used for some place names either. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 04:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

My point was that there has been an argument that the article names should be taken from the airport websites. If that is going to be the convention, then those would be the names. To be honest, I don't care that much about Midway. At least people can still understand what the article is talking about. However, a title such as Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport needs to be shortened to a workable title. DB (talk) 04:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

As per WP:NAME we really should be using the name that's in common use. And that's common use from a world-wide perspective. So LHR would still be London Heathrow Airport rather than just Heathrow - I think we'll always end up with the "Airport" bit at the end. In some cases it'll be hard working out what the most suitable title is - perhaps a survey of what it's commonly called in the press? Booking systems? Regardless we should always have redirects into the article from the official and other names which are used. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wangi (talk • contribs) 14:21, 30 January 2007.

Do people really say London Heathrow Airport? I would think that Heathrow or London Heathrow would be more common. By the way the company calls it Heathrow Airport and the UK AIP calls it London Heathrow Airport. I have flown into or out of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, but never the London versions and then usually onto Manchester. What is Manchester-Boston Regional Airport commonly called? I know people who say the only way to fly into the UK is to miss London altogether and fly into Amsterdam. The point is that common names are not precise enough to be used in Wikipedia. Booking systems will probably use some variation on one of the official names. As to the press, well if the airport is advertising in the press then they will probably use something official. If the press is located near the airport probably "Heathrow" or if located in another area/country then "London Heathrow". I don't think that we have the capability to properly survey around the world to find out what people call any particular airport. And as I pointed out before (semi-jokingly) that unless there are more than one airport in an area it would appear that the common name for most airports is the airport. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:51, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Even if people often don't add "airport" when referring to an airport, it's fine for the title to have it as clarification. Most people around here say Manchester Airport, so the article title could be Manchester Airport (US). I've heard LHR called both Heathrow and London Heathrow, so keeping it as is would be fine (as I mentioned, the "Airport" in the title is appropriate for clarification). However, these examples are relatively minor. I'm more concerned about the cumbersome titles given to several airports in South America and Mexico. If there's going to be a convention for airport naming, what is it? The name used by the airport authority? Common use? Very few people would recognize the full, official names of many airports around the world. DB (talk) 20:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
So then have the "common names" as redirects to the actual airport title and reference that in the article.....so it would be: a redirect (common name) leading to the formally titled article...and then the opening sentence would read...[formal title] commonly called [common name] is ......... For example: a redirect to Midway would be: "Midway Airport", and then in the article we could say...[Chicago Midway International Airport] commonly called "Midway Airport" or something like that. (I believe that is how it is in the article presently anyway) Sox23 21:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Which is the opposite of the norm on Wikipedia. Simply consider United States and United Kingdom or any other country - do you see the official name used as the article title? We really should use WP:NAME here, like everywhere else. /wangi 21:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Just have it the other way around: [official title] redirects to [common name]. That way it would be compliant with WP:NAME and anyone searching for the official title could still find it. Furthermore, the official title could be used in the opening paragraph and the infobox. DB (talk) 02:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Going back to Midway for a bit. When I drove to LAS today, I read the Southwest billboards for their Chicago flights. They used two names for the destination airport, the first was 'Chicago Midway' and the second was 'Chicago (Midway)'. Vegaswikian 01:06, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I brought up Logan before. I should also add that technically, that article title isn't the "official" name. The full name of the airport is "General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport". So, should that page be moved as well? DB (talk) 02:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I say leave it up to the editors of Logan International Sox23 03:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

First off Logan International Airport is the proper/official name. The airport authority calls it that or Logan Airport and so it's consistent with what I said before. DB, give the poor South Americans a break eh! We ain't much better in North America with, Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport, Crystal City-Pilot Mound/Louise Municipal Airport, Dauphin (Lt. Col W.G. (Billy) Barker VC Airport) (gets an award for the most gratuitous use of brackets), General Rodolfo Sánchez Taboada International Airport or Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. If the official title is to be a redirect to the common name then in the case of multiple airports, such as the Santiago Airport mentioned above, which one gets the common name and why? WP:NAME seems to apply whenever people want it to or when there is no/little possibility (as with the US/UK example) for confusion. When I tried Maritime Command I found it a redirect to Canadian Forces Maritime Command. The first is the common name and the second the proper name but WP:NAME says it should be the other way round. If you type China in the search box you get China the civilisation. But the country is at People's Republic of China which the article says is "...commonly known as China..." so it should be at "China" according to WP:NAME. Another example of WP:NAME being ignored is Football (soccer). That is not the most common name and it's not even an official name. The most common name would be Football which is a general article about all types of football codes. And now I'm off to make the Santiago Airport a disambiguation page. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 03:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, no, the official name is Gen. Edward Lawrence Logan Int'l Airport (as listed with the FAA). You used the airport authority's reference to BOS as justification for calling it Logan Int'l. So, should the airport's self-reference be used as the standard? I'm fine with that, but as I said before, that would mean the renaming of several aforementioned airports. For disambiguation, the article can be titled Santiago Airport (Chile), a form that is used for several other airports that share names. I mentioned South America since it seems to have the greatest concentration of verbosely named airports. There are plenty in North America as well. DB (talk) 05:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
What I said was "Airports should be at one of the official names. Either the one the airport authority uses or the one the governing agency uses." And I have been quite happy with that for some time now. I don't want to repeat myself but look back up to the Toronto Pearson Airport. It's at the operators official name and not the government official name. The article says "The full name of the airport, according to the GTAA, is now "Toronto Pearson International Airport", but it is also sometimes simply called "Pearson." News media and travel agents typically refer to the airport as "Lester B. Pearson International Airport." ". A look around shows that we have some airports at the common name, some at the operators name and some at the government name. You can find examples all within the same country. The Santiago Airport disambiguation page now has 13 airports listed (there are probably more but I need a break), 4 have Santiago as part of the airport name and 9 are at places that include Santiago as part of the community name. As to the Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport, well it appears the official site calls it Aeropuerto de Santiago, so there is no reason that it couldn't be at Santiago Airport (Chile) or Santiago Airport, Chile, except that if the other name is an official name why bother. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 08:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I would like to think that when there is a designated name that does not require the use of a dab, then using a dab should be avoided. I think there would be agreement on that point. I may create a sub page on airport article naming. At some point we could start using it within the project. We can start building it as various issues gather consensus. Vegaswikian 18:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

PS CambridgeBayWeather, with reference to Santiago Airport see MoS:DP. I've cleaned it up so it'll help our readers more. Ta/wangi 21:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. There are probably more but I needed to take an airport break. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 23:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Destinations gone wild

What happens when you don't check an article for a while: Aberdeen Airport!! /wangi 21:38, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Love all of the links. Did some minor cleanup to get the return to normal started. Vegaswikian 22:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Ta, I'll get round to moving the intnl back to normal and merged back into the rest of the destinations (only a single terminal) and moving the plane-spotter-tastic charter list back to normal... But not just now :) /wangi 22:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Airport Weather Template

I propose adding the Template:Airport_weather template to airports. The objective would be to create a template that contains pilot and general aviation weather resources for every airport. Thoughts? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TexasSpaniard (talk • contribs) 22:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC).

I noticed you adding this to LCY, and was going to say something about it there... I think this is a bad idea. Wikipedia is not a technical resource for aviation (or anything else) and these links offer absolutely nothing for 99.9% of our readers. We should be very careful of presenting information which has safety implications - this is an encylopedia, not a guidebook. Thanks/wangi 22:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
It is often difficult to locate, consistently, the proper weather resources for an airport. Providing links to relevant airport/aviation weather in a consistent format across the airports would enhance the value of each page and inform users about where they can get additional information relevant to that particular airport. I noticed that other airport templates include all sorts of information that is relevant to pilots or general aviation - weather, flight status, runway diagrams (which only pilots use), sectional chart links, etc. Thought doing something similar and consistently would add value.--TexasSpaniard 04:14, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Miami International Airport

Miami International Airport is currently on hold to become a good article.--JEF 23:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

External weather link on Air Canada destinations

Hi. I have been engaged in a discussion on my talk page regarding the appropriateness of this link. I have been arguing based on WP:EL that it is not. But User:DSatYVR thinks otherwise. I'd like to shift the discussion here and not on my talk page. Any thoughts on this? /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 22:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

  • How does this information help the encyclopedia? It does not help the general reader. What does the current weather and forecast do to improve the article or the users understanding of it? I thought it was clear from previous discussions that the pilot information should not be listed since any pilot knows where to get the information from. Also, isn't this basically a redirected page since it gets its data from other sources and as such is not encouraged by WP:EL? Finally This data is not in a form anyone but a pilot would understand so again it is not needed. Vegaswikian 23:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Requested photo - Airport surface friction tester

Does anyone happen to have a photograph of a surface friction tester? They resemble normal cars, but with a small fifth wheel mounted to the rear. They are normally used in snowy or icy conditions to determine the amount of grit and deicer to be used. I could do with a picture for the Winter service vehicle article. Thanks! Laïka 23:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I'm on holiday right now. If you don't get one by the 24 February remind me again on my talk page. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 12:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Names of airports

I've been in a discussion at Talk:East Midlands Airport#Nottingham East Midlands/East Midlands about the use of "official" names in the first sentence and also in the infobox. It has become obvious that there is a need to have some way of explaining why there are different names used in a single airport. Also after seeing this there needs to be some agreement as to the structure of the first sentence. Should it be all the official names or just the airport authority name or the the most common name? My feeling is that the first line should contain the most common or airport authority name and the infobox have the other names. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 12:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Most airport articles have the full name in the first sentence and then any alternate names. My edit didn't actually add or remove anything; I just switched the order (it was previously common name, full name). DB (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the infobox should definitely have the full official name. The first sentence should have the common name. Currently, most airport articles also have the full name, but to clean up the lead it might make sense to remove that. DB (talk) 16:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry didn't mean to suggest that you removed anything. Just wanted to see about cleaning up/standardise the first sentence. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 23:57, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Manila airports

Should we disambiguate Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (serves Angeles City) and Ninoy Aquino International Airport (serves Manila)?

Example:

Should we change it to the format below?:

Because one user insists that Angeles City should be stated as Manila-Clark or Clark-Manila. -chris^_^ 07:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Whenever there are questions about how an airport should be listed, check here. Both of those airports should be listed as Manila so a dab would be required. Since we try to keep the dabs short you might want to use '-Ninoy' and '-Diosdado', if those make any sense, or the city names. Vegaswikian 08:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, but airlines refer to it with different names for example South East Asian Airlines refer to Diosdado Macapagal International Airport as Angeles City. Asian Spirit, Asiana Airlines, Cebu Pacific and Hong Kong Airlines refer to the airport as Clark. Tiger Airways refers to the airport as Manila-Clark. While, AirAsia refers to the airport as Clark-Manila. So we should then refer to it as Clark because most airlines refer to the airport as Clark. Instead of refering to it as Manila-Clark, Angeles City, Manila-Diosdado, Manila-DMIA. -chris^_^ 08:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
      • I do have hesitations in disambiguating these two airports. One reason is because there is actually a flight route that flies between these two. I believe Asian Spirit flies between MNL and CRK. If it were a regular case of a city with multiple airports, like MOW or BER, then this would not happen. I believe there is a tendency to call CRK as Manila-Clark just because an airline calls it that way. However, if that is the case, then we should also disambiguate FRA and HHN, because Ryanair calls the latter Frankfurt-Hahn. The same goes for Barcelona-El Prat and Barcelona-Reus. So here is my suggestion: MNL will be called Manila while CRK will be called either Angeles City or Clark. At least OZ calls it Clark, I don't know about the other airlines. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 20:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
        • I think it should be called Angeles City, since that's where it is. The IATA and OAG just call it Luzon Island, but I don't see any sources except a few airlines that call it Manila-Clark. DB (talk) 21:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
          • If we are going to use Angeles City, then the master list will need to be updated to not list that one under Manila. Vegaswikian 21:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
            • I concur. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 21:58, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
              • It was already updated so the choice is now Angeles City or Manila depending on the airport. Vegaswikian 22:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
                • I think it should be called "Clark" since most airlines refers it to the name and hardly anybody refers the place as "Angeles City". I'm fine with calling the place "Angeles City" too. Terence Ong 11:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I continue to oppose this, loudly. Clark Airbase first and foremost serves Manila, which is obvious from the airlines that fly there [1] [2]. What justification do you have for claiming that Angeles (pop. 250k) could possibly overshadow Manila (pop. 10+ million), and why not then agitate for Narita International Airport to be moved to serve Narita, Chiba instead? I think "Clark" is the obvious choice for the name, and it should be listed under Manila in the master list. Jpatokal 04:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I dont think there is a hard and fast rule on main markets being the sole determinant in this debate. Senai International Airport serves Singapore to quite an extent, in fact probably more so than Johor Bahru, so are we going to call it Singapore-Senai?--Huaiwei 07:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
While I agree to Jpatokal in saying that CRK serves Manila than Angeles City, I oppose it being listed as under Manila. Manila has one airport, it just happens that another not-so-close airport serves it. Manila is not the same as Berlin (which has three airports, Tegel, Schoenefeld, and Tempelhof) or Moscow (which has Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo). Manila is more like Frankfurt (which has FRA and HHN) or Barcelona (which has BCN and REU). Both Frankfurt and Barcelona have main airports, but is also served by rather distant airports by LCCs. In fact, what is much strange should I say with regard to Manila's case is that there is a flight from MNL to CRK and vice versa, by Asian Spirit. If Manila had two airports, then it would be weird for one to fly from one to the other, if it serves just one city. So with this in mind, I'd say we call CRK as Manila-Clark but still call MNL as Manila, in parallel to Frankfurt-Hahn and Frankfurt. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 16:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd say that we should state CRK as Clark in the masterlist not Manila-Clark, because most of the airlines serving CRK [3][4][5][6] refer to it as Clark not as Manila, because only two airlines refer to it as Manila-Clark/Clark-Manila [7] [8], while only one airline refers to it as Clark-Angeles City[9]. -chris^_^ 09:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
With regard to the masterlist, I have hesitation to list CRK as Clark due to the fact that "Clark" is not even the name for a city or a town in the Philippines, unless you're considering the Clark Special Economic Zone to be one. I don't have problems listing CRK in the masterlist using the nearest town (if I am correct, Angeles City). This airport just happens to serve Manila metropolitan area as well. No need to include it in the Manila entry. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 10:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, the destination lists are by city. So Clark can not be used as the destination. It can be used to dab the location, but not listed as the location. Vegaswikian 23:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
So, what should we name it then, Manila-Clark, Angeles City or Angeles City/Clark -chris^_^ 08:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
MNL is Manila in the destinations, and Manila in the masterlist, while CRK is Manila-Clark in the destinations, and Angeles City in the masterlist. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 13:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
So if an airline flies to CRK from MNL we should state CRK as Manila-Clark? -chris^_^ 22:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Jpatokal has a point. CRK serves as an alternate airport for Metro Manila, not primarily Angeles City. Weird as it may seem, there is indeed a flight that flies MNL-CRK. However, this is just a minority. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 22:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Do not link destinations?

Would someone explain to me why we should not link to destination cities in airport articles? Heimstern Läufer 04:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Archive 4 and Archive 3 show the discussions on this topic. The general consensus was not to link them. However, if you have a solid case for why they should be linked, please feel free to propose a change to the guidelines. DB (talk) 06:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
The main arguments I'm seeing against the links are that it clutters up the page too much. I don't think this is a good argument. Adding some blue to the page doesn't really increase the clutter. As for why they should be linked: It's a simple matter of providing information. If we're going to tell people to what cities an airport has flights, it is only logical that they should be able to click the location in question to learn where it is. Someone who sees, for example, "Eugene" on the San Francisco International Airport and wonders "Hmm, where's that?" shouldn't need to type "Eugene" in the search window (which results in a disambiguation, anyway), the reader should be able to follow a link and get there easily. Heimstern Läufer 07:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Heimstern's view above. It appears that opposition to the inclusion of links was probably due more to a reluctance in expeding lots of time and effort creating all those links across the airport pages than whatever reason stated beforehand.--Huaiwei 11:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Here's how London Heathrow Airport looks with all the destinations linked. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 03:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually if avoids the appearance of a link farm. It also follows the WP:DAB guideline that Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link. Vegaswikian 03:43, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
First, please cite the relevant guideline which discourages "link farms". Second, please explain in what way is a destination list supposed to be a disambiguation page.--Huaiwei 03:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I never claimed that there is a guideline that a link is discouraged by policy, but I suspect that most users would find screens of blue links to be confusing at best. I also never said that a destination list is a dab page. I was making the point that there are other guidelines that discourage excessive blue links. Vegaswikian 04:00, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
If a destination list is not a disambiguation page, could you explain why it should follow WP:DAB then? Conversely, if an article is not related to airlines, should they be forced to follow guidelines spelt out in this wikiproject?--Huaiwei 04:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Another concern is the difficulty of maintaining the list. As it is, editors occasionally come around and add destinations out of alphabetical order and other things like that. Those problems are easy to fix and don't occur too often. However, if every destination is linked with the style [[airport|city]], it is highly likely that errors will be much more frequent. Furthermore, they'll be more difficult to spot, since they would require looking at the source code or clicking each link. For the less experienced editors, it would also be more confusing to contribute, since the huge mess of links would be somewhat daunting. DB (talk) 04:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
The purported "difficulty" reminds me of concerns over the existance of our Category:Airline destinations articles. It dosent stop those from thriving, however, all with linked continents, regions, countries, cities, and airports. So in what way is this supposed to be more difficult to maintain?--Huaiwei 04:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Dbinder. Its very ugly to see lots of blue links in an article, it will be just very confusing for many. So, leaving it the way as it is will be much much easier. Terence Ong 恭喜发财 04:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Ugliness, confusion and ease are all purely subjective. Please provide evidence to demonstrate if the above had actually cause real inhibitation in any aviation-related article. In particular, I would love to know if the same concerns has plagued articles in Category:Airline destinations.--Huaiwei 04:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
The airline destination lists are just that - lists. Since they're bulleted, with only two links per line (city and airport), they're much easier to sift through. However, the destination lists in airport articles are in-line, just comma-separated. So, at hub airports, there would be a huge mass of links all next to each other. DB (talk) 04:23, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
But a list of airline destinations in an airport article is also a list. If the concern if over visual clarity, than will a rework of that section in airport lists help? Perhaps a table will be far more visually pleasant, for example?--Huaiwei 04:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
How would a hypothetical table look, and would they add much more space to articles? FCYTravis 04:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
A simple table with one column for the airline and the other column for the destinations perhaps? I am again concerned with presentation issues seem to be taken as more pressing than concerns for accuracy through concise links.--Huaiwei 04:58, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I take it you're not in the publishing industry. Clear and readable design is as important as completeness. Without a presentation that enables readers to use the page, all the content we put in is wasted. Turning the destination lists into a morass of poorly separated, difficult-to-interpret links won't work. FCYTravis 05:20, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Quite on the contrary, I have been the "publishing guru" for the organisation I am working for, but that is besides the point (unless you are telling me you are in the publishing industry and you have something substaintive to say). We are all aware that "clear, readable designs" are important. Unfortunately, few has been able to tell us in what way does blue underlined text make them "unclear" and "unreadable" to the point that they must overule the need to be factually concise and useful to the reader.--Huaiwei 05:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I am in the publishing industry, actually - and though I'm not a designer, I know what's readable and what is simply ugly. A string of linked words like this is very difficult to read and particularly unattractive to the eye. Link farms and over-Wikification like that are strongly deprecated for that exact reason. I'm not ideologically opposed to Wikilinking destinations, only opposed to doing it in a way which reduces readability. FCYTravis 06:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
My bad. I didnt know publishers does the same thing as journalists, and that jounalists dictate to the very last how their newspaper looks. The point here is no one is asking for a string of links in a sentence. We are linking a list of entities, each of which need not be read as a sentence or as a whole. US Airways/US Airways Express (BHM, BTV, BWI, CLT, CMH, DCA, ELM, FLL, ITH, LAX, LGA, MCO, MEX, MIA, PHL, PIT, RDU, SFO) isnt exactly as unreadable as a string of linked words, else a reputable editor like yourself wont have used it in your userpage.--Huaiwei 06:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Resetting indent... User pages are more-or-less exempt from the guidelines on articles, as long they're not offensive, don't break copyright laws, etc. DB (talk) 06:27, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I do not have a policy of nit-picking on people's userpage or on their personal expertise unless they choose to bring it into the picture, or choose to question my qualifications or expertise.--Huaiwei 06:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm the newspaper's editor-in-chief, so yes, I do actually dictate to the very last what goes out the door. I don't micromanage, but if I don't like what I see, it doesn't get printed. What I slap up on my user page for airlinegeeking isn't necessarily what I'd slap up into articlespace - the fact that I use IATA codes is proof enough of that.
Furthermore, thanks for pointing out another problem, which my userpage nicely illustrates. What do we do when a destination is served by more than one airline? Do we wikilink it twice, which is generally deprecated, or do we leave an un-linked entry floating in a sea of links? Do we wikilink to the city or to the airport? Which city, in the case of multi-city airports?
Just look at that US Airways line and compare it to the United line above it. You can't honestly tell me that the mostly-unlinked United line isn't easier to read and more pleasing to the eye than the string of links in the USAir one. FCYTravis 06:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Ah thanks for informing. I do wonder if your newspaper is required to follow the wikipedia Mannual of style since personal backgrounds is being brought into the picture? As for the "problem" you raise, how should linking a destination multiple times due to their presentation as a list of entities be unnecesary? I personally consider the US Airways list far more pleasing and complete than the one for United Airlines, which would probably look like a bunch of chemical compounds to someone not familiar with airport codes and aviation in general.--Huaiwei 06:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Quite simply, if we had a magic wand that allowed us to Wikify terms without creating ugly underlined blue links everywhere, I'd help you add destination links right now (barring the issues of multicity/multilink). The problem is, we don't. A hyperlink creates blue, underlined text, which draws the eye toward it - it's a focal point that says "click me."
But when you hyperlink everything, everything ends up blue and underlined. This means the eye is drawn toward everything at once. It's the same reason you don't see huge blocks of bold text in a well-designed publication. Bolding everything defeats the purpose and makes for readability difficulties. So does linking every word in a paragraph. I get a headache when something looks like this.
Don't you? FCYTravis 06:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Again, for more contrast:
Multiply that by several times for AA@DFW, UA@ORD, DL@ATL, etc. FCYTravis 07:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Once again, if I may repeat myself, linking a sentence which is meant to be read in sequence and in full is not the same as linking a commaed list of single entities, each of which may require the user to pause and process the information before moving on to the next. In that sense, yes, I indeed feel the fully-linked destination list look far more authoritative and complete than the unlinked one, which gives me the impression that any tom dick or harry can simply come along and plonk in an entry, Not that the links are supposed to resolve this issue, but since we are talking about personal perceptions here, this is my honest view on things.--Huaiwei 07:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I fully concur. Inasmuch as we are striving to provide a useful source of information, links should be added. In my judgement, there is no ugliness involved and no clutter, only the color of the text changes. More work? You bet! But it adds greatly to the end result.JBEvans 14:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Direct and Non Stop Cities

I think that something that has to be straighted out, I believe that cities that are only served with a stop in another city should not be listed a city served. I know that it was the policy to not list it for flights in the United States, for the most part. We need to make it clear, no flights that involve stop in another city should not be included. Especially since airlines like Southwest exist, Southwest has a flight that goes, HOU/SAT/ABQ/LAS/OAK or MDW/DAL/PHX/LAS/OAK and US Airways has a flight that goes LAS/PHL/LGW. Either one of these should not really be considered a direct flight when it comes Wikipedia. Please discuss it below. Ben 06:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The WN and US flights would be covered by the guideline already established - don't list domestic direct flights with stopovers. However, for international flights, it makes sense to list them. Several carriers have routes with a stopover on the way. For example, United flies IAD-EZE-MVD and Lufthansa flies FRA-DXB-MCT. For all intents and purposes, they serve both destinations from the hub airport. The reason for not listing domestic direct flights is that many are only direct by flight number and actuallyoften involve a plane change. They also change very frequently. International destinations with a stop generally change much less often. DB (talk) 00:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Direct flights with a stopover are crucial when it comes to international flight coverage, especially when we consider the fact that some of these stopovers are more due to technical limitations than anything else. Most common case in point - the Kangaroo route. It is quite misleading to argue that British Airways does not serve Australia, and vice versal for Qantas in the UK.--Huaiwei 00:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
We don't disagree. Those sorts of direct flights should be (and are) listed. FCYTravis 05:23, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
My statements need not neccesarily reflect disagreement.--Huaiwei 05:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I think we should consider, at some point, a cutoff. Although the Kangaroo route was once technically infeasible to serve nonstop, with the introduction of the Boeing 777-200LR (9,420 nm range; LHR-SYD is about 9,200 nm), it should be possible now. It may be somewhat impractical to subject passengers to the 18-hour flight that would be required, however. But picking a certain minimum distance between airports to allow adding indirect services to the list would be arbitrary. Honestly, I think maintaining these destination lists in Wikipedia is kind of stupid. It's cool to see where various airlines fly in an easily digestible form, but it's a waste of time and not exactly encyclopedic. Still, saying so won't exactly stop people from spending their time on it, especially considering how many airport articles have this data in them now. --BetaCentauri 08:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that flights involving a stop should be included, unless it is a destination that can be reached solely from that airport. Here's why: For Detroit (DTW), it lists Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei, though there is a stop at Tokyo-Narita. This is most likely because the flight numbers are the same. But MSP does not list any of these destinations, though anybody from MSP, SFO, HNL, LAX, SEA, or PDX can connect right onto the same flight to Beijing as those from Detroit. The flight from DTW to Beijing is not distinct. Many other passengers are picked up at Tokyo from these other airports. Passengers from those six airports will ALL arrive in Beijing at the same time because the flights to Tokyo are scheduled so that they can all arrive at similar times. Just because they share the same flight number does not mean that the majority of passengers will be from Detroit!
Another example is San Francisco-->Hong Kong-->Ho Chi Minh City on United. The Ho Chi Minh site listed SFO as a destination, though it does not list ORD, Singapore, or Tokyo as possibilities. Again, they all connect to Hong Kong at similar times. Either we should be listing ALL possibilities (according to the ideas above) or none. Gittinsj 22:27, 26 February 2007 (UTC)gittinsj
Clearly sfo-sgn is an error. The outbound flight on United clearly states there is a plane change, so it is not a direct flight. The return clearly is available only via two different flights. Vegaswikian 23:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really sure whether a plane change or same flight numbers should be the only criteria used to determine whether a destination should be listed. I can understand why someone might say that Taipei should be listed for Detroit by NWA, as the only way to get there from the US on NWA is through Detroit, with a stop in Osaka. On the other hand, I don't see why Beijing should be listed under Detroit, since you must go through Tokyo to get to Beijing. You do not have to go through Detroit to get to Tokyo on NWA. There are other options. Gittinsj 04:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)gittinsj
According to the guidelines in the WikiProject, the destination should be listed if it is a direct flight, which not necessarily mean non-stop. However, there are faux direct flights, such as DTW-NRT-PEK. There is an aircraft change in Tokyo, the DTW-NRT leg is operated with a 747, but the NRT-PEK leg is operated with a 332. But there seem to be no aircraft change for DTW-KIX-TPE. Thus, I believe one should list accordingly. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 18:01, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Linking dates

The following appeared undiscussed in the wikiproject recently: "For future destinations and destinations with announced termination dates (except seasonal flights), add [begins MMMM DD, YYYY] or [ends MMMM DD, YYYY], respectively, in the local date format. Do not link the dates." Could someone please explain why the date should not be linked?--Huaiwei 04:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Archive 5 had a brief discussion on it, and through edit histories, it's clear others agree. Furthermore, as my edit summary said, the changes reflect actual practice. DB (talk) 05:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
In other words, the said "community" is disregarding the Wikipedia Manual of Style, and is insisting that the entire world must write their dates as according to American standards?--Huaiwei 05:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, the MOS is a guideline, not a policy, so it can be overridden by consensus. Second, would you re-read what you just quoted: "add [begins MMMM DD, YYYY]... in the local format. I'm confused as to how that is "insisting that the entire world must write their dates as according to American standards". DB (talk) 05:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
So the "guideline" vs "policy" thingy is being raised again. I certainly hope the above is also applied in subsequent debates. This being a "guideline" which can be "overridden by concensus", the said discussion hardly brings up any convincing reason why an existing guideline should be overridden other then "I think it should not be linked because it looks funny". And you must be assuming readers will only look at their local airport pages, since looking at anything outside their locality will probably present them with annoying date formats. Shall we add a disclaimer for our users not to venture beyond their local articles for fear of offending anyone? And yes, the fact that I actually failed to sight the line "in the local format" simply demonstrates the inherent bias in that guideline, and a possibility for people to misread and misunderstand it. If the dates must remain unlinked for some strange reason, would you consider the possibility of showing any possible local date format for the sake of NPOV?--Huaiwei 05:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I see it says "...in the local date format." I don't think that anybody is paying too much attention. In London Heathrow Airport, Toronto Pearson International Airport and Birmingham International Airport (UK) there are both "dd mmm" and "mmm dd". In the Birmingham one the dates are linked. THe few US airports that I looked at all seem to be consistently "mmm dd". CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 09:17, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
For a long time, only the month and day were included. Since these changes are only announced a few months before the change, the year is implied and the data is transient which means that linking to the future date is not adding any information to the article. I think we should go back to the simple format using only the month and day. As I read the date conventions, including the year only seems to be mandated when the date is going to remain in the article and in a year or two no one would know what year this was about. That is clearly not the case here. Vegaswikian 21:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

External links

There are 700+ links to farecompare.com most of which lead to things like www.farecompare.com / flights / Jinka-BCO / city.html. So I assume that nobody minds if I remove them all as spam? CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

  • No objection. It might be good to expand the list of what should not be included on the project page. Anyone know if there is a bot that removes spam links and if so, should these links be added to the bots list? Vegaswikian 21:27, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Subsidiary destinations

The current format for destinations is:

  • Major Carrier (ABC, DEF)
    • Major Carrier Express operated by Contractor (GHI)

I'm fine with that, but many pages also have

    • Major Carrier operated by Subsidiary (JKL)

I think it should just say the subsidiary name:

  • Major Carrier (ABC, DEF)
    • Subsidiary (JKL)
    • Major Carrier Express operated by Contractor (GHI)

The reasoning is that it's already listed under the major carrier, so mentioning that the subsidiary is operating as the major is redundant. I've made this change on Zurich Airport for Swiss European, if anyone wants an example of what I'm talking about. Note: this applies to dependent subsidiaries (Swiss European, Lufthansa CityLine, American Eagle, etc.). It's a separate issue from how to deal with independent subsidiaries, since it doesn't appear that anyone objects to dependent ones being listed under the parent. DB (talk) 19:19, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with DB. 190.41.187.14 22:28, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think any change would be required to American Eagle destinations, as they don't operate as American Airlines. I would say that Ted flights should remain "Ted operated by United" because unlike CityLine, et al, Ted isn't actually its own airline - just a different paint job. I think the rest is a very good idea, make it so. FCYTravis 23:05, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Right. Same should apply to US and DL shuttles. Does anyone object to the change? DB (talk) 00:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
You got the issues of express carriers operating their own flights under their own IATA code, while at the same time operate flights for the major carriers under a major carrier's code (eg the UA affiliates). What if they operated both their own flights, and the contracted flights for their major affiliate at the same airport. --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 15:33, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
See the LAN destinations from Jorge Chavez International Airport. LAN Peru, a subsidiary of LAN, flies LAN aircraft painted in LAN colours (so does LAN Argentina and other subsidiaries) with Peruvian registrations with LAN Peru flight numbers but marketed by LAN. I think that in this case it is reduntant to mention that LAN twice, particularly since it's indented to state that LAN Peru is a subsidiary operating flights for LAN. It should be:
  • LAN Airlines
    • LAN Peru or operated by Lan Peru

190.41.187.14 16:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

This seriously needs a change. Just look at the case of Jorge Chavez International Airport. It is completletely redundant and stupid really to have LAN Airlines stated stated twice. This needs to be ammended. 201.240.162.16 03:16, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Weston Airport in Ireland

The Weston airport was on RTÉ News today. Shouldn't it be mentioned at List_of_airports_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland? http://www.westonairport.com/ I ask because I am not sure if it has been overlooked, or if there is a policy about private airports or something. -- Evertype·✆ 18:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I don't see why not. Vegaswikian 20:19, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Possible new wiki project - Wikiproject Aviation

Hello! Several editors at WP:AIRCRAFT, a project closley 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) 14:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Fortress hub

What is it, and how do we define it, other than "know it when you see it" (DL@CVG, NW@MSP, et al.) Discuss. FCYTravis 08:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Do we need to define it? I think Doug Parker defined a focus city as an airport where an airline was the predominate operator in competition with other airlines. Maybe something like 70% of the flights would be a fortress hub? Would that work for your examples? Vegaswikian 02:59, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Project tags

I've been going through tagging and retagging some articles. I found a few interesting questions, and would like to propose a consistent approach to dealing with these issues.

  1. Some articles are already tagged to one or more child projects. I suggest that if a page falls into more than one child project, it should be re-tagged for the parent aviation project. So pages that were tagged to Aircraft and Airports would be re-tagged to Aviation (with the same assessment).
  2. Articles that deal specifically with one project should be tagged to that project. So aircraft and parts of aircraft should be tagged to the Aircraft project (e.g. airframe). But terms relating to operation of the aircraft should be tagged to aviation (e.g. airway).

--Dhaluza 20:17, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I don't think that would be correct. As I understand it, all three are active and a one size for all guideline for templates might not be a sound move. I think editors need to look at the article and decide which project or projects are right for each article. Only the projects working on the article should be listed. The aviation project is probably not concerned about airline articles, but the airline project would be. Likewise, someone has been slapping the aviation template on every article. This template adds nothing but clutter to a ton of articles. Vegaswikian 20:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I agree that an individual needs to look at the article and make a decision (I'm not proposing a bot edit). But I'm trying to get consensus on a guideline that people can use to make these decisions with consistency. So an article tagged to both Airports and Aircraft, but that does not relate directly to either one, should be re-tagged to the more general Aviation project. I think the main thing is that an article should not be tagged to two child projects, or worse to a child and a parent. Dhaluza 21:01, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Yes, an article tagged to both Airports and Aircraft, but that does not relate directly to either one, should be re-tagged to the more general Aviation project. One example is Talk:Instrument flight rules, currently tagged as an Airport project page, but I think that this more properly belong under Aviation projects scope. But articles such as Talk:Instrument Landing System belong specifically to the Airports project. Its all dependent on the scope of the projects. If there is some sort of overlap, it should be corrected. If the overlap is required, we could deal with it in the same way the Military history project does. Use the main project template, with an added parameter identifying other involved projects, which would then categorize them in both projects. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 22:03, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
        • Your examples on IFR/ILS make sense to me, but seem to be inconsistent with the argument you make about aircraft engines and aircraft. If the ILS should be included in the Airport project because it is part of the airport, then aircraft engine should be in the Aircraft project for the same reason. I don't have a strong opinion either way, except that whatever we decide it should be easy to explain and most importantly consistent. My initial thought is that we should try to push things down to the child projects as much as possible, and only use Aviation to cover the gaps and overlaps. But I'm open to other opinions. 22:43, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Lanseria International Airport

The wiki page referring to Lanseria Airport should be changed to reflect its current, name, the Lanseria International Airport. http://www.lanseria.co.za/ -- leuce 16:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

You could move the page yourself, that does not require any help. Terence Ong 恭喜发财 10:12, 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)

Cabotage flights

One user on the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Bayan Lepas International Airport articles added Kuala Lumpur for Cathay Pacific on the Bayan Lepas Airport article and Penang for Cathay Pacific on the Kuala Lumpur Airport article. I have reverted their edits to the page that Cathay Pacific cannot transport domestic passengers but they reverted my edits again. If you see any domestic destinations added to foreign airlines, please revert them. Thanks! Bucs2004 19:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Airport name confusion

User:Pinoy78 created a page named Manila - Clark International Airport, which does not exist, it is a copy of Diosdado Macapagal International Airport which is being referred to as Manila-Clark, for it is a secondary airport for Manila, I suggest the said page (Manila-Clark International Airport) to be deleted. -chris^_^ 07:58, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

  • It's now a redirect. Vegaswikian 08:39, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Peer review and collaboration

Since it seems that this is the only aviation related project to have set up a peer review and collaboration section, and neither seem to be receiving enough attention to be effective, would the Airport project members be against moving these pages to WP:AVIATION and expanding them to include reviews and collaboration of all aviation related articles? This would allow a bigger base of uses to see and help. Template:WPAVIATION Announcements could also be used to promote these types of projects. {{WPAVIATION}} already includes to code |peer-review=, |collaboration-candidate=,etc. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 23:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


OR Tambo International Airport

Hi

Can you please clarify with me: regarding Mango Airlines - why are you wanting to put it below South African Airways? This makes no sense - their operations are entirely seperate - its just that SAA is the owner. That being said, it has its own CEO, etc. There is nothing similar between the two - no shared FF program, or anything of the like. The relationship between them is similar to Virgin vs Singapore, BA vs Qantas, etc. Please help! -- Chris Lester talk 16:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello. The list is not dependent on whether operations are together or not. According to WP:AIRPORTS, one lists subsidiaries underneath the main airline, regardless of whether the operations are together or not. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 17:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
As far as I understand, the two want to act as two totally seperate airlines. It's not the Delta Shuttle - Delta relationship; nor is it the Qantas-Jetstar. There is nothing common between the two, except the owner. Is WP:AIRPORTS a policy or simply a guideline or where does it fit into the picture? -- Chris Lester talk 18:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
WP:AIRPORTS is a collection of guidelines in standardizing airport articles and other articles pertaining to aviation. Regardless of the status of those two airlines, if one is a subsidiary of the other, then it would be listed that way. According to Mango (airline), the parent company is South African Airways, which means that it is a subsidiary of SAA. On the other hand, the examples you cited above (SQ and VS, QF and BA) only are examples of companies which have a rather large but still less-than-50% foreign ownership (SQ owning 49% of VS, BA owning 45% of QF). Thus, we still cannot say that VS is a subsidiary of SQ. If you want to argue more about this, I suggest you move it on the talk page of the relevant WikiProject if you are not in agreement with the current standardization protocol. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 19:03, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Discontinued Service

Should we include a section of discontinued service in airport articles or not? This section is inconsistent through different airport articles and this question has come up before through various talk pages and there has never really been a clear consensus...any comments? Sox23 22:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure whether we should include this. The main reason is because there may not be good resources for verifying the information. I am guessing that most of the edits here would just be supported by personal evidence, which is not encyclopedic. If there is a good source for an airport article, then possibly, but if there isn't, then the article can do without. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 01:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't see why it would be needed in any case. It doesn't contribute much to the article and for some airports (DFW, PIT, BNA, RDU, STL) could take up a lot of space due to cuts, mergers, etc. over the years. NW036 01:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
While this is interesting information, is it encyclopedic? I think that for most service, the mere fact that it was once offered is not a reason to include it. If the few cases where the service might be encyclopedic that information could be added. But as a general rule, it is probably not needed and should not be included. Vegaswikian 05:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

STOLports

Just to let everyone know, I started an article on STOLports. It's only a stub and I could really use some help on getting it to become a good article. Mrld 23:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Air Canada flights

As of now, most trans-border and domestic flights of Air Canada is operated by Air Georgian, so how should we state it?

Should it be:

or:

I'll be updating the destinations of Air Canada and I'll be using the 2nd format for the mean time. Because at the Air Canada website they sell the Air Georgian operated flights as Air Canada operated by Air Georgian. Not Air Canada Jazz operated by Air Georgian. -chris^_^ 04:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Liberia, Costa Rica

Hi all. I don't know if this was discussed before, but is it really needed to put (CR) for Liberia, Costa Rica, in airline destination lists? I am arguing at this point (in the Los Angeles International Airport article) that it is unnecessary, since supporters of the addition mainly argues that it is needed to disambiguate Liberia the city from Liberia the country. On the other hand, I say that the lists are lists of cities, not countries. It would imply therefore that the Liberia in the list refers to a city, not a country. It is not the same case as for Portland, where both Portlands are cities. In the case of Liberia, if one finds a Liberia in a list of cities, then I assume that this Liberia would be a city as well. I don't know, maybe others just don't see the implication. Any thoughts? /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 21:10, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Destination lists are cities and not countries so unless there is another city with the same name that has commercial air service a dab is not needed and would be confusing in this case. Vegaswikian 01:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Sorry, but you have to let me disagree with you!! Extra info doesn't lead to confusion. If the extra info helps, fine. If not, they'll just ignore it!! Tanks! --Inetpup 05:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Well, standardization prevents confusion. As long as the reader is sound enough to deduce that the list is composed of cities and not countries (and I am assuming based on good faith that our dear readers are of sound mind), then there would be no reason to confuse Liberia as the West African country. It would be absurd for someone to expect a country in a midst of a list of cities. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 19:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Now, why would you make an assumption that readers are of sound mind?!?!? --Inetpup 05:26, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
        • It's not absurd. Liberia is such an unusual (and small and new) destination that most people wouldn't expect that it's in Costa Rica. Most would assume it's the country and an oversight of the author that the city was omitted by accident. Thanks!--Inetpup 19:35, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
          • Like any encyclopedia, we have guidelines for may of the ways that material is presented to avoid confusion and bind together the various articles. Using cities in the destination lists is a style we use. To accept the position that we need to dab a city from a county in a city list would be an error since the style is to only list the city. So a position that this is absurd is not correct since that would mean we are violating our style sheet and listing a country and not a city. Not likely to happen except by error in some unwatched article. Vegaswikian 20:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
            • I do not understand why you think that there is a need to disambiguate. In my opinion, you are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist in the first place. If a reader comes across the list in Los Angeles International Airport, goes thru the list, sees Guadalajara, Guatemala City, Hartford, Honolulu, Ixtapa, Jacksonville, Kahului, Liberia, Managua, New Orleans, and so on, I would not expect a reader to think that the list is a list of cities and countries mixed up together! Because if that is the case, then which ones are cities and which ones are countries? Should we put country codes on all of the cities to make sure that the readers will deduce that these are cities, not countries? I assume that readers are of sound mind and that they can see the logic behind the lists. (By the way, in case you were wondering why I assume that humans have a sound mind, just read about the psychological experiments that scientists have done on humans in finding out the learning capability of our species, you will be surprised how elevated we are compared to other animals.) Thus, if the other entries in the list are cities, then there is no reason for Liberia to be not a city. Simple logic. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 20:26, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
It is neither absurd nor illogical for a reader to experience confusion upon seeing "Liberia" in a list of cities. In fact, it is quite reasonable for a reader to assume the country is what's being referred to, as a) Liberia is by far the most common usage of the word, and b) Wikipedia is replete with mixed lists. I had no idea there was even such a place as Liberia, Costa Rica until this discussion came up.--chris.lawson 23:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I am not saying that they will not experience confusion. Of course, the most popular usage of that term pertains to the country. However, what I am saying is that if they see that term in a list of cities, then I would assume that they would resolve their confusion and have a garden path, revising their interpretation of the term from a country, to a city, with just deducing from the type of list it is in. With this in mind, I say that the disambiguation is unnecessary. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 23:17, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
For lists of destinations, in cases where a country and city share a name, or two cities share a name, it would be preferable to write the name so that no ambiguity exists, period. A wikilink would be a simple way of doing this, or in a case where wikilinks are not desirable, an intelligible abbreviation for the country would be useful. Note that San José, Costa Rica, is disambiguated on that same page by the use of "(CR)" after the name of the city; I don't see why the inclusion of two letters is such a horrible thing for something that adds so much clarity to the list.--chris.lawson 02:28, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Exactly, Chris. Thank you. And I'll also add that because Delta has expanded so aggressively to Africa, that it makes this point even more salient. The average (non-expert) reader of Wikipedia will automatically assume that Delta has yet added another Africa destination! --Inetpup 02:02, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I seriously doubt that most people, when looking at a list of cities, will assume that Liberia is referring to the country. Look at the following list: (Apple, Peach, Pear, Raspberry); would anyone assume that "Apple" is referring to the computer company? Based on context, people can reasonably deduce the meaning of a word (or in this case, a place). DB (talk) 05:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, with regard to San Jose, there is SJC in California and SJO in Costa Rica. Those are both cities. I agree that there is a need to disambiguate there. But with a city name and a country name, how many more times will I need to repeat my argumentation? Also, read DB's reasoning above. I wonder why you cannot see the common logic in the list. The argument by chris. that a country and a city shares a name therefore it must be disambiguated falls apart because again, for the umpteenth time, the list is only composed of cities, and it is way too obvious that the list contains cities and cities alone. I suggest you read this. All members of the list are cities. Liberia is a member of the list. Therefore, Liberia is a city. Simple as that. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 15:51, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I forgot, the average (non-expert) reader of Wikipedia I believe do not even have a clue where Delta flies, so the thought that Delta has added another African destination is not present at all! /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 16:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Regarding DB's statement, look at the following list: (Apple, Peach, Pear, Raspberry); would anyone assume that "Apple" is referring to the computer company? ... it's a disingenuous statement and a nonsequitur. The correct analogy would be the following list of names: (Miller, Adams, Davis, Axel); most people would assume this is a list of last names, but I would have significant doubts when I stumble upon the last one, 'Axel'; it looks like it could be either. I might be tempted to assume that it's a last name, but then again I would be afraid to assume anything about that name, because it isn't familiar to me!!! This leads the reader to think the list is in error!!! Thanks. Feel free to applaud me for my convincing arguments. --Inetpup 02:56, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Let's consider that the lists in all articles have been for cities for a while and no one has seen a problem with this. So now that we happen to have a country and a city with the same name, what problem is created? The list still contains only cities. How many people would confuse the city with the country? How many would be confused after looking at an encyclopedic list of destination cities? Most editors feel that the number who are confused would be rather small, but not zero. So given the success of the current system, there would have to be a demonstrated problem with the current system not handling your problem for the majority of readers. If you can show this to be a fact, then you might get consensus to change. Without that, consensus will remain where it is. Vegaswikian 05:16, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Exactly, you only prove my point. Liberia is a NEW and UNUSUAL destination with an UNUSUAL name. Why haven't people had a problem with this??? It obvious isn't it? It's because Liberia wasn't even on the map (with a major airport) until recently. For these reasons, it's critical to list [CR] as the country. Got it? Thanks! --Inetpup 07:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but you have not shown that our current style is causing a problem. Contrary to what you just said, most editors seem to be saying there is no obvious problem. So, if there is a problem it is not obvious to other editors. Consensus seems to be against your proposal so unless you have something new to add that clearly shows there is a problem, this discussion is stalled. Vegaswikian 07:56, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Er, "most?" I count two in favour of the disambiguation and two against. That is neither a majority nor consensus in favour of either position.--chris.lawson 15:04, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Ehem, let me just straighten up the math. Those in favor of the disambiguation are Inetpup and chris.lawson, while those against are Vegaswikian, DB, and me. Cheers. /ɪlεktʃɹɪk bluː/ 15:11, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Belfast and Glasgow Airports

Should we desambiguate Belfast and Glasgow's Airports since those since have 2 airports that have commerical service? Bucs2004 04:23, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

For example:

  • British Airways (Belfast-City, London-Heathrow, Detroit, Manchester)
  • easyjet (Glasgow-International, Chicago-O'Hare, Belfast-International, Beijing, Tokyo-Narita)
  • Ryanair (Glasgow-Prestwick, Bristol, London-City, Shannon

OR

  • British Airways (Belfast, London-Heathrow, Detroit, Manchester)
  • easyjet (Glasgow, Chicago-O'Hare, Belfast, Beijing, Tokyo-Narita)
  • Ryanair (Glasgow, Bristol, London-City, Shannon)
I think the distinction is only necessary if their other aeroport BHD serves non-domestic destinations, which it doesn't. --Inetpup 05:54, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
A few changes - both Glasgow and Belfast have two airports.
  • Glasgow - GLA (Glasgow-International) and PIK (Glasgow-Prestwick)
  • Belfast - BFS (Belfast-City) and BHD (Belfast-Harbour)
The title I would go for is what is what IATA recognises. (but then I think that Nottingham East Midlands for EMA is just wrong when it is closer to Derby and partly developed by Derby money - but this is another story entirely)
However following this to its logical conclusion, then for London LHR, LGW, LTN, LCY, STN would all be called just London. Or possibly I am missing the point
In conclusion I think these airports should be disambiguated --Stewart 12:36, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Belfast-City and Belfast-International is reasonable, but Glasgow should stay as is. I've always made the argument that if one airport dominates air traffic in a city and most people would assume that the primary airport is being referenced without a disambiguation, then it should be left without one. Does anyone assume that "Glasgow" refers to Prestwick? DB (talk) 05:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Airport classification

I fly my glider from an airfield called Lasham Airfield. The airfield is owned by the gliding club and is PPR for visiting powered aircraft. However for some reason it has been classed by Wikipedia as 'public'. To me 'public' when applied to an airport implies that commercial aviation occurs there. We do welcome visitors as prospective members who want air experience flights, but 'public' doesn't seem to be the right classification. In the opinion of another user (Cambridge Bay Weather), "The current Wikipedia system (Military/Public/Private) is a bit simplistic and at the same time a bit confusing." Is there an opportunity for devising a better classification? User:Jmcc150 16:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC).

Let me say that I come at this from a USA persepctive so there could be some bias here...In my thinking, commercial vs. non-commercial has nothing to do with the public/private nature of a field. Essentially, a public field is one owned by governmental entities whereas private implies the need to get permission to use the field from the individual owner. Based upon my understanding of what you are saying, your field would indeed be public.JBEvans 15:06, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually in the case of Lasham it is a privately owned airport that requires prior permission (PPR). It's unclear from Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Airport Infobox as to what "private" or "public" means. I assumed that "private" was used for airports listed as "PPR" (prior permission required). In other words if the airport is not open to the public as such then it's a private one no matter the owner, such as Tanquary Fiord Airport which is Government owned. And that airports such as London Gatwick Airport are public even though they are owned by a private company. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 04:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

New WPAVIATION banner, and the importance scale

The new multi-project banner, {{WPAVIATION}}, does not use the importance scale. Reading over the comments here, I think that this project is having the same problems that other projects are, in that the ratings applied by users are too subjective, and based upon their personal opinions as to the importance of an article/subject. Is it alright with the Airports project members if the importance scale is dropped when the airport articles are retagged with {{WPAVIATION}}? - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 07:49, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Anyone object to me redirecting {{AirportProject}} to {{WPAVIATION}}? - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 18:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Charter Airlines

When editing an airport, could I list Charter airlines like Champion Air or World Airways or Allegiant Air.

  • In my opinion, only if they have scheduled service or public scheduled charters. Otherwise every airport could have them since they could be chartered anywhere. NW036 00:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Air Wisconsin Issue

Could people please come and view the discussion that I started in the Air Wisconsin talk page? While trying to avoid an editing war I started this conversation to remove what I feel is rather biased commentary on Air Wisconsin's management techniques. Thank you. NW036 22:15, 14 March 2007 (UTC)