Wikivoyage talk:Airport Expedition/Archive 2013-2018

Airports: Another Thought

I've been thinking about the current Wikivoyage classification of airports as unworthy of articles unless they are 'huge', which, to me, seems to be somewhat limiting. I can understand that we do not want hundreds of tiny articles about small, municipal airports, but outside of North America, there seem to be comparatively few of these in existence. At present, large airports (but ones that could not really be classified as a settlement on their own) are referenced by many different articles, but each presents different information. For example, in the United Kingdom, the article on Leeds provides extensive car parking information about Leeds Bradford Airport, but as one can tell from the name, it does not serve Leeds exclusively, so the Leeds page would not necessarily be the traveller's first port of call when searching for information. The same applies for Manchester Airport, the catchment area of which is much of the North of England and I'm sure this applies to other areas around the world. What I would suggest is the creation of an 'Airport Template' which would allow the information dispersed on multiple articles to be collated and used more easily. The articles for the areas that these airports served would then link back to them. I am certainly not advocating an article for every airport and airfield in the world, but as airports are such integral parts of people's travel experience, it seems unfortunate that the information we have is spread so thinly across a number of articles. Perhaps the exception for airports could be reworked as 'permitted for large airports that serve more than one city'? Any thoughts are very welcome. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 17:54, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Totally support this idea. In fact I was thinking of writing a couple of articles on airports I know well. And as you say there are a number of airport I fly to where I am not going to the city it is named after, should at least be put under a region.--Traveler100 (talk) 19:12, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

As Wikivoyage increases in size I think the arguments against certain article types need to be revisited, and aiports might be a good example. One key point in any change, however, should be where to draw the line between an article-worthy airport and a non-article-worthy airport, and I'm not sure that "airports that serve more than one city" would suffice as it could be argued that just about any airport serves all surrounding towns and villages that don't have their own airport. What about using a criteria such as airports that serve connecting flights and have multiple shops and restaurants available? That would eliminate tiny municipal airports and focus on airports that have enough information to at least fill out a "buy" and "eat" section. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:40, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Many of the major airport I think should already be allowed, as they often have integrated or nearby hotels. Passes the Can You Sleep There? question.--Traveler100 (talk) 19:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

That does sound like a better definition! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 19:46, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Pardon me, most airports have a nearby hotel. Would you write an article about Murmansk airport? Number of passengers per year could be a good criterion, but let's try to look at this problem from another direction. Frankfurt airport is huge, but what can we write about it? Plan of the airport, connections between the terminals? Well, it is on their website, and it is not very useful because most people simply follow signs to their departure gate. Places to eat? Well, they are all same bland and expensive, I see no particular reason to choose any particular place. One major problem is that travelers are not free to choose what they do at the airport. They have to go to a specific terminal and, moreover, to either domestic or international area. Then a travel guide to the airport should cover every corner, which is difficult and does not make much sense. In my opinion, the only sensible topic would be: how to spend night in the airport? Do we need a separate article for this? Well, only in exceptional cases. --Alexander (talk) 20:24, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

The points you make are fair, but I'm not sure we can simply dismiss an idea simply because a website with this information already, exists, after all, there are hundreds of travel guides in existence. I would advocate the use of a different, shorter template for airports, that would hopefully make the Wikivoyage experience more thorough. It is true that much of a visit to an airport is pre-structured, but I think this is just as much about making Wikivoyage a more complete experience for the user. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 20:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with Nicholasjf21, whose remarks immediately above this text cut right to the heart of the issue, IMO. I propose we proceed based on the criteria Ryan enumerated above. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

To Ryan's criteria: take a look at the Tallinn airport. It serves connecting flights, and it has about 5 places to eat as well as 3 or 4 duty-free shops. I described this in one line, because I can't distinguish between one place with overpriced coffee and another place with the same overpriced coffee. Yes, we can write about every of the eating places, and we can list items sold in duty-free shops (Hennessy, Bacardi, Smirnoff... what else? apparently, Vana Tallinn), but I see this information as having very low importance for a travel guide. Once you are at the airport, you will easy find it yourself in 1-2 minutes, because the whole terminal building is less than 100 m long.

The criteria should be way more strict. For example, I don't think that any of the two Berlin airports is worth writing about. --Alexander (talk) 21:56, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I suggest the following: someone takes liberty and responsibility to write an article about a (reasonably) big airport and bring it to the guide status. Then we better understand how it looks like and which guidelines should be used. In general, articles about individual "buildings" (be it airports, museums, or theaters) are a very slippery slope. Our strategy is to have all information in one article or in several district articles. Now we make one more article for the CDG airport, then one for Louvre, then probably one for Orsay... and we end up being Wikipedia. --Alexander (talk) 21:45, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, we do cover and gather information on airports. As a case in point, Sydney has nearly 3500 words written about it, within the Sydney and related articles. The information covered there includes the sleeping overnight info, the terminal transfer, postal and communication services, and getting to and from, and nearby accommodation and food.

I think Frankfurt is a good example of why words aren't proportional to airport size. If you have an airport where there is much the same food available everywhere, in-terminal integrated rail, shuttle to all terminals, atms and English speaking helpstaff wandering around, free Wi-Fi with English instructions on the splashpage - what is left to write? Sydney, on the other hand..

To me it seems like airports should always be included in the city guides to begin with. The last thing we want is a sudden proliferation of stub airport articles. At some stage we hit a point where they overpower the main article, so we then decide if there is unneeded information, or whether we need a separate guide. --Inas (talk) 21:58, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I suppose I know what you mean and agree with your points, but perhaps not necessarily with your conclusion! I agree that it is nice to keep areas together; I don't doubt that airport information is collated on here -I've seen it done so extensively, but I'm not sure this is necessarily the right choice here. Of course, a proliferation of stub articles is absolutely undesirable, but if done properly and in the right places, I think airport articles could be very effective. Perhaps this would be something to discuss on city talk pages and decide on a case-by-case basis. I am not necessarily in favour of articles for every airport, even if they are large - some will naturally fit into city articles very well, but in many case airports serve a region and each page that mentions them provides different information. I would hope that this would provide a simpler and more comprehensive result for users. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 22:14, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I think gaining consensus on the city guide works (with the status-quo bias against). I really think Can you sleep there? will give us the wrong answer in many cases. --Inas (talk) 22:34, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that one use of a guide to an airport is to suggest things to do near the airport if there is several hours between connecting flights. This is most likely to happen at airports with international connections. International travellers may not know which small town is near the airport eg Slough for Heathrow Airport, and this could be a better way of spending a half day than trying to get into the city that the airport is named after. AlasdairW (talk) 22:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I really like that idea - sights in the vicinity would be an excellent category to have on airport pages. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 23:02, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Airports that serve regions can already be placed in region articles. See Bali for a star example. Globe-trotter (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

That is good, but the point I'm making is that the information we give for airports is spread widely but thinly over a number of articles. Would it not be better to have a single page which contains this information and could be easily linked to from surrounding articles, which I think would give the user a better overall experience. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 23:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I think we have to allow flexibility to deal with individual cases. There is ongoing discussion on Talk:New York City about how to shorten the article, and one obvious step is to remove most of the long, boring - but for some travelers, necessary - sections about airports and transportation to and from them and the various boroughs. We are considering farming most of the Newark Airport info out to the Newark guide and the LaGuardia and JFK info to the Queens guide, but a "New York City Area Airports" guide might be a better idea, and it wouldn't be a short article.

As a preliminary thought, I would propose the criterion that if airport information and information about transportation to/from one or two area airports has become too long and boring in a destination guide, it would be an excellent idea to farm it out either to the locality where the airport is or to its own dedicated article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:47, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of maybe writing a little section about what there is to do nearby during long layovers, but such content should be prose with links to relevant districts/cities/towns...not the primary location for listings (unless they are actually inside the airport). One thing that I find very useful in Wikipedia articles about airports are the lists of airlines/destinations, which seem to be kept up-to-date. It would be great if we could have a cross-wiki bot that can keep these lists in sync! For good examples of this see: w:Dubai International Airport#Terminals, airlines and destinations or w:Miami International Airport#Airlines and destinations. AHeneen (talk) 03:59, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like the sort of thing that Wikidata might help with, once phase 3 is up and running. For airport articles here, I like Ikan's criterion above - that an airport article could be started using information from destination guides if there's a consensus that it's too detailed to fit well in those guides anymore. I'm not so convinced that dispersal or duplication of airport information across guides is as good a reason. Moving the information up to a regional guide seems like it might be sufficient in that case. --Avenue (talk) 10:50, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Some of the comments above have challenged me to creating a page on Frankfurt Airport (watch this space). There are many things that are specific to the airport that are different to the city or region. Get in section can definitely benefit from detailed information, hotels should list those with shuttle buses to/from airport which may be in other towns. Airports can benefit from an Eat section, some airports everything is passenger side of customs while other are public side or both, good to know before you walk through. Frankfurt in particular would benefit from knowledgeable tips are when to eat and drink. The argument that you can get the information from the website amazes me, as I see the opposite argument going on with regards to listing link style and external/interwiki links, or is this just resistance to change and expansion of the site? No discussion here about printed version as WiFi in many airport cost.--Traveler100 (talk) 11:19, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for possible misunderstanding. I wrote that a good map of the airport is always available on the airport website, and we don't have to duplicate it. I did not mean that the airport website can replace a full travel guide. Please, plunge forward. I am curious to see your writing on the Frankfurt airport, because I am using it every 2 months and sometimes even more often. Despite this very extensive usage and a good knowledge of every corner in Terminal 1, I am really not sure that I can provide any useful tips relevant to this airport. Free coffee in Terminal A and moderately expensive Frankfurter sausages between gates 26 and 28... that's really all essential information about the departure area. --Alexander (talk) 12:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Started Frankfurt Airport as a point of discuss on content and layout. I extracted information from the Frankfurt page plus added some additional knowledge of my own. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:12, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Jumping in. We do have three guide-status airport articles: O'Hare International Airport (which just barely failed a star nomination), Heathrow Airport, and Kansai International Airport. I don't support creating airport pages unless the relevant article#by_plane section is already well-developed and long. The in-guide information should be a priority. --Peter ^Talk 22:10, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

And by the way, if someone wants to work on an airport article, a Charles de Gaulle Airport article would be worth writing—that's one big, confusing place! --Peter ^Talk 22:12, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I have to say, that the attempt at Frankfurt Airport so far is a strong argument against. It is big on overlap, and adds nothing that couldn't be summarised in a few extra lines in the Frankfurt article. Perhaps we're still missing something, but I'm not sure what. I'm with Peter, lets add the info to the article, then when we know it is too big and complex, chop it out. --Inas (talk) 22:36, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I, for one, was astonished to find that John F. Kennedy International Airport redirects to a subsection of New York City. Having arrived and departed from JFK frequently, it seems like an obvious airport article to get cracking on. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:41, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

JFK does look like an obvious candidate for a separate article, certainly. In terms of overlap with the Frankfurt article, would we not remove most of the stuff that is in the main article and has been copied across? In each city article I think it would be better just to have a few sentences describing interaction with the airport from the city end and a link to the article.--Nicholasjf21 (talk) 23:33, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Look at the Heathrow info in the London article. There is still a fair bit of content there. --Inas (talk) 00:59, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Do we think we're coming close to any sort of consensus on this issue? Do we need a new way of defining what sort of airport deserves an article? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 22:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think we seem to agree that airports with little content don't get articles. We seem to agree that when airports have significant legitimate content that outgrow their articles that contain them, they get separate articles.

The Frankfurt airport experiment in assuming a large airport needs a separate article, demonstrates to me that this is the wrong approach. Any additional content could easily have been added to Frankfurt without overwhelming that article, and we don't need to repeat what is in common in every major airport on the planet. We could add the info there, without too much drama, and there just isn't any point in duplication.

The interesting remaining cases are airports that are removed from the cities they service to the extent they are are almost satellite cities, or where an airport primarily services a neighbouring city, or when several airports service a single city. --Inas (talk) 03:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I have a few thoughts on separate articles for airports. At certain airports like Frankfurt, and I believe also Dubai, Chicago and Los Angeles for example, a large part of the passengers aren't actually going to or leaving from the city where the airport is located but just changing flights. For obvious reasons these are usually comparatively large airports handling a lot of flights and transfers. If the airport is your final destination, you would probably need just information about where to find the taxi or bus to the city which can be compressed into a few sentences in the city/town/region article. But if you are just transferring you would be interested in getting from one terminal to another, possible unexpected "surprises" peculiar to the airport, probably restaurants and entertainment inside the airport plus hotels in and near the airport. This will add up to a lot of information to fill a city article with, and for passengers who is only switching from one flight to another it would be practical find information just about the airport. I'm not talking about making separate articles for each and every international airport in the world, but let's say 15-20 large transfer airports. And we should look at those as travel topics rather than destinations. Ypsilon (talk) 21:58, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Airport template

Continued from above under a separate heading. See Talk:Airport Expedition\templatesandbox for the work-in-progress template proposal.

While several years ago I probably would have been opposed to expanding the scope of the site to include airports, given the growth of this site I think it's probably time to start encouraging articles about large/busy airports. Two comments though:

1. I don't like the Frankfurt airport article, but I think it's because the proposed template isn't airport-specific. The huge number of sites devoted to frequent flyers show that there is a massive demand for information about airport lounges, nuances of security/passport control, airline types, etc. I think if we're going to do USEFUL airport articles that we need section headings that encourage contribution of that type of airport-specific info.
2. I think the "split the info out when it's large enough" is a chicken-and-egg problem in this case - putting airport information in city articles encourages focusing on the bare minimum about that airport in order not to overwhelm the article, and airport articles have tended to only be created when someone plunges forward and starts one from scratch, rather than when the content begins to overwhelm the city article and warrants a separate article.

I don't think we should begin creating tons of airport articles using the Frankfurt airport article as a guideline, but I do think that if someone can propose a suitable airport template that this is an idea that could add significant value to the site. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:06, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of a different template for airports - I agree that people do find the little details about airports very useful for when they travel. Any ideas for categories in such a template? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 13:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm still keen to see this demonstrated to work in practice. How about we continue to hack the Frankfurt airport article as an example. If we can get this article containing useful content out of the scope of the main article, then we have somewhere to go. --Inas (talk) 00:39, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! Are there any categories that you think would help it work? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 00:49, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

The one that keeps coming up is Lounges. A general section on how to pass spare time in transit sounds good (i.e. are there city tours, can you get the train direct to an nice restaurant for lunch, etc), is there a viewing platform. A distinct See/Do isn't really necessary. The Get in section needs to explicitly divide the airside part and the landside part because mixing those in one section is confusing. The thing I like to know about an airport is time to gate if you've no bags and have checked in online. I realise this can differ for different terminals. I've also created this expedition and swept the discussion here. If we're going to give this a go, then lets be organised in our approach. --Inas (talk) 02:24, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I think a separate heading that lists airlines is appropriate for an airport article. This section would also allow us to remove the long airline lists from some of our city articles and would be a logical place for listing lounges since they are usually connected to an airline. Including feedback from Inas, and working in standard section headings, here's a rough proposal for an airport template:

• Understand
• Airlines (airlines and their corresponding destinations, info about airline lounges)
• Get in (how to get to/from the airport)
• Get around (airport transportation, terminals, security, time to gate)
• See and Do (viewing platforms, other activities)
• Buy (shopping areas in the airport, duty-free tips, etc)
• Eat (restaurants in the airport)
• Drink (bars/coffee shops in the airport)
• Sleep (lodging connected to the airport - do not duplicate listings found in other articles, instead include pointers to towns with lodging suitable for a long layover)
• Connect (internet / post in the airport)
• Cope (shower, luggage storage, chapel, etc)
• Go next (what is feasible for someone with a long layover)

It might be nice to consolidate that somewhat - "See and Do" and "Cope" might be candidates for a new combined heading, since a visit to the chapel or a shower are basically activities when you're stuck in the airport, but I'm not sure what an appropriate heading name would be. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:09, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Wait?

Last time I was in Frankfurt in transit, I did lunch at the Rheingold. [1] Very convenient, but a train trip. Does it deserve a listing, or is it pure duplication? Do we just include a pointer to Mainz. Last time I was in a layover in Auckland, about 2km walk from the airport there is a Putt-Putt Golf, a really quite cool one. Does that get listing? It probably wouldn't be mentioned in the Auckland article if not. Do attractions outside the airport get a separate section to things in the airport? --Inas (talk) 04:00, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

My preference would be to never duplicate listings and to instead highlight other articles when talking about non-airport restaurants and activities, so in your example we would include a note in the "Eat" or "Go next" section about Mainz being an accessible layover option. Using an example I'm more familiar with, if you fly into LAX you can eat at the very, very cool Encounter restaurant, which is right in the middle of the airport; that listing would be moved from its current location in our El Segundo article to the (unwritten) LAX article. However, when suggesting that those with long layovers might want to play golf at the nine hole course that is a few miles from LAX, we would include that information in the "Go next" portion of the airport article similar to the following:

El Segundo This town borders LAX to the south and is easily accessible by taxi, bus or rental car. It offers many lodging options, a walkable downtown filled with restaurants, and even a nine hole golf course that is less than a ten minute taxi ride from the airport.

I think allowing duplicate listings opens up a can of worms, particularly since any hotel within 30 minutes of the airport will claim to be "a short taxi ride away", and it thus would take someone with good local knowledge to figure out what is truly an airport hotel vs what is essentially deceptive marketing. That's my opinion - if there is a middle ground that allows good info about nearby restaurants, hotels, etc to be included in the airport article without turning that article into a spammy mess then it would be worth considering, but past experience makes me (perhaps overly) cautious. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:18, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Agree that a better layout is needed than the current Frankfurt airport article which is based on city format. Get in section should be split into arrivals and departures to the airport. So departure would have details on check-in and as mentioned above times to gates through security etc. Also maybe details on long-stay car-parks and car hire return locations. Arrivals details on where car hire pick-up is (some airports it is in the building, others you need to find where the shuttle bus leaves from). Getting around should be split by airside and landside and probably for most airports by terminal. How about tips on where to find seat you can lay horizontal on (there are a few places in Frankfurt airport)? Is information on availability/location of banks, postal service, churches, pharmacy and so on useful?--Traveler100 (talk) 06:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Airport pages should be organised by airside and landside as once committed to going through controls it is not always easy to get back. Airports like Frankfurt and LAX have more choice landside while Detroit and Atlanta airside is better. For example Eat and Drink sections should be a number of times in a page depending on what zone of the airport they are in. Also on the comment about lounges. Information on carrier lounges would be useful. For example at Frankfurt and Detroit there are lounges for frequent flyers but at LAX and Orlando only for Senator class. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:18, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Excellent point, Traveler100, and crucial to decide this early on in our template debate before we get into the detailed nitty gritty. -- Alice^✉ 08:49, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like an excellent idea. So we really need 'Arriving' and 'Departing' sections, as well as 'landside' and 'airside' subsections for lots of the facilities. I do like 'Wait' as a replacement for See/Do and Cope too as these probably would come under the same broad header in an airport. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 09:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Something to use to get the idea tuned. talk:Airport Expedition\templatesandbox. A start but should it go so deep with subsections or should it be Get around Landside Terminal 1 ,Get around Landside Terminal 2? Also what section are per zone and what section is for all airport (such as Sleep)? --Traveler100 (talk) 11:14, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Not a bad start. I think "Arrive" and "Depart" would match our style a little better (or possibly something like Take off/Touch down), and the headers should definitely not have landside, airside, and next capitalized. I don´t see any real reason landside should be split into terminals in many cases and in fact, I don´t really like having two top-level Get around sections - I think in many cases these can be covered together (If there are two whole section, where to put a complete airport map?) I also don´t like seeing multiple Eat, Buy subsections etc. -- I´d rather see one Eat or Buy section, itself split into terminals etc. If I get hungry at the airport and pick up my guide, I wouldn´t expect to have to look for a subsection of "Get around". Same for See and Do-- I don´t see how these are logically subsections of Get around - and in what sense could "waiting" possibly be considered a form of "getting around"?

I´d actually much rather see something a little closer to Ryan´s proposal above, with Airlines getting its own section. I might suggest something like:

• Understand
• Airlines
• Arrive / Touch down

Baggage

Car rental

Other transportation

• Depart / Take off

Parking

Check-in

Security

• Get around
• See and Do
• Buy
• Eat and drink
• Sleep
• Connect
• Cope
• Go next

Texugo (talk) 12:01, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I can see your point on merging the Eat for landside as you can at most airport move around between terminals, although not all of them easily or quickly. Once airside though I think there should be a distinction. You really do not want to Keep going through controls just to eat. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree on the distinction being important, but I think that distinction should occur as subsections within a top-level Eat section, not by creating multiple Eat subsections under Get around, since eating is not a logical part of getting around, and since it is closer to the look and feel of our other articles.Texugo (talk) 12:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

OK that sound logical, one Eat and Drink section but then split by airside and landside. Also I think the suggest of Touch down and Take off is clearer and less chance of being misunderstood than Arrive and Depart. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:34, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, looking at how airports arrange their listings and just generally how people still tend to stick to the same terminal whether landside or airside, I think arranging by terminal and then airside/landside would be better. I changed the template but left it as third-level headings, fourth-level headings seem too defined. - Torty3 (talk) 12:54, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Nice, and yeah, I don´t think we want fourth-level headings in the template. I think for the model template, though, it would be sufficient to divide those sections into landside (all together) and the individual airside terminals. Landside within a given article can be split into terminals later if it starts getting too long. If someone is in the airport long enough to look for a (landside) movie theater or other activity, I don´t really think the terminal has to be the first criterion. And if it is, for a given traveller, they should be able to quickly see which things are closeby by looking at the terminal number, which will presumably be listed just after each title in the spot usually reserved for addresses. Also, just because it is in the next terminal doesn´t necessarily mean it is far away. In truth, I don´t think airside should necessarily be divided into terminal subsections either unless they have separate security, especially in articles where all those subsections will end up having only a couple of listings each. Travellers can tell where something is by glancing at the address field, just like they do for a city article which is geographically much bigger. It's a case of subdivide-only-when-it-becomes-necessary, and I think the base starting point ought to be just airside/landside for each of those sections.Texugo (talk) 13:17, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I would agree with Texugo that sub-dividing into "Landside" and "Airside" (where appropriate) should be sufficient for the template. For the actual articles, "Landside" and "Airside" should usually be enough, with subdivision by terminal (or some other division) only needed later if the article gets long. Consider: since we shouldn't have airport articles with listings for every single Starbucks and McDonalds in the airport (see not a yellow pages), even for a huge airport like LAX that has eight terminals there may only be 20-30 restaurants worth mentioning in their own listing, so subdivision into 8 sub-sections would be counter-productive. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:34, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, that would be best. Would it be possible though, to emphasise that listings should be ordered by terminal rather than alphabetically, especially for those 20-30 restaurants. Might just be details at this point. - Torty3 (talk) 15:45, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I´d rather leave them as alphabetical; otherwise it just amounts to subdividing them without saying that's what we are doing. I think people are at least as likely to choose a restaurant on the basis of cuisine type or price as they are by terminal number.Texugo (talk) 15:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Wait, why not list them by price range? Most major international airports have one or two high quality, high-end restaurants, and I usually hunt those down if I have over an hour (since air travel is misery). They'd be easiest to find with a price sort. There was an article (Forbes, I think), that had a fabulous list of these worldwide, but has vanished from the internet. I had been meaning to make something like it for a travel topic... --Peter ^Talk 20:41, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, that could work too, when all the listings added are given a price range (which is often not the case). But I wouldn´t put Budget/Mid-range/Splurge in the template. They can always be busted out later if there are enough listings to warrant it.Texugo (talk) 20:47, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Agree (again) with Texugo - I don't think we want to prescribe third-level headings in the template as the organization will likely be airport-specific. If there are two terminals and sub-division is necessary then organization by terminal will likely be best. If there are eight terminals then organization by price might make sense. If there are a handful of food courts and a handful of standalone restaurants then organization by... you get the idea. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Perth airport terminals are 9km apart with a transfer bus that runs every 50 minutes. Alpha organisation just doesn't make sense there. Melbourne terminals are all part of the same building, so it does make sense there, you'd easily walk between terminals for something decent. Lets just make suggestions for the division, so when we do decide to divide by price or terminal our headings are standard. I'd really like our headings to be unambiguous, so I'd like to have one section that is unambiguously for ground transportation. Get in doesn't work, and it isn't clear to me which of Arrive or Depart would contain that info. --Inas (talk) 22:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, suggesting standard subheaders would be fine with me, as long as we keep them out of the new article substitution template. Does anyone besides me and Traveler100 like Take off and Touch down instead of Arrival and Departure? I think they sound very Wikivoyage. Texugo (talk) 22:51, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be worth putting 'See & do' inside Depart/Arrive as well? Some airports that I've to have very different attractions depending on whether you're arriving or departing. I do like 'take off' as a title, but I'm not so keen on 'touch down' if I'm honest. I don't know whether it's just not a term that people use in Britain, or whether I'm just rather ignorant, but it always strikes me first as a term associated with American Football, rather than a plane landing. Perhaps Outbound/Inbound or Take off/Arrival? I'd be interested to hear what other people think about this issue. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 23:16, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Again with See and do, I don't see any reason to take our standard top level headers and put them inside other sections, and the attractions and activities are not logically part of arriving or departing. Like Eat, etc., we can keep the top level See/Do sections and subdivide within them for landside/airside. It would be non-intuitive for the traveller to have to look in the "arrival" section if they are looking for something to do.

American football uses "touchdown" pronounced as one word, with emphasis on the first syllable. "Touch down" does not sound the same, as they are emphasized as two separate words. A plane takes off, a plane touches down. Do you guys not say this? Is there another analogous term? Texugo (talk) 23:31, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

A section that would be useful is something like Transit, to give information for connecting passengers. If I am transferring between two international flights, do I pass through immigration etc. In some airports one can change planes without formally entering the country. I could imagine looking at several airport articles when planning a long flight like UK to Australia, and if I need a visa, or to wait in long queues at immigration to change planes then that airport would be crossed off the list. The full visa information of course belongs in the country article, but transit is a special case. AlasdairW (talk) 23:40, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Transit sounds like a good section to add!

I think it would be more natural here to say 'land' instead of touch down, but I understand that that doesn't have the same ring to it! I'm not saying that that the phrase is completely foreign to me, but that, to me (and I may well be being stupid here!) it doesn't sound completely natural, but I'm sure it would still be well understood. My only other slight qualm is that these terms don't really reflect what the traveller is doing, until the point when they actually leave (or arrive) at the airport. I.e. if I were to look through the duty-free shops before getting on to the plane, I would not be taking off, but departing. At present, I can't really think of an alternative, only the somewhat uninspiring Inbound/Outbound so we might as well leave it as touch down for the moment. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 23:49, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

How about "After landing" instead of "Touch down"? --Avenue (talk) 00:38, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I was shooting for a short and snappy verb like pretty much all our other standard headings.Texugo (talk) 00:42, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I think we want to be cautious about having too many headers, particularly if some of them may not have much info for some airports, so my opinion is that "Transit" can probably be handled in most cases within the "Get around" section, and in extreme cases a sub-header of that section might be warranted. As to the other proposals, I like "Arrive" and "Depart" (or "Arrival" / "Departure") better than land / touch down, but don't feel particularly strongly on the subject. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:53, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I also prefer "Arrival" / "Departure" to "land" / "touch down". I don't think many of our readers will be too bothered about sticking to our usual "house style" for section titles - better to have them as clear as possible. As far as editors are concerned, it may actually be advantageous to have different section titles from our "normal" destination articles so that it makes editors actually go and read (what will presumably be) a slightly different set of style and formatting guidelines for Airport articles. -- Alice^✉ 01:15, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

The new format looks good, trying out on the Frankfurt Airport article. Have just added a little information on parking as text but wondering if this would be better as a number of listings, particularly if start adding long-stay possibilities. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:04, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I really don't like Arrival and Departure. There is a real problem with putting the ground transportation in Arrival when it equally belongs in Departures. We're running into the Get in Get out problem again. Lets be straight up and down here, and have Airlines, Arrival and Departure, Ground Transportation. The Arrival and Departure covers the airport/airline part. Ground Transportation clearly means the stuff getting to and from the airport. --Inas (talk) 23:42, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Do we feel that we are any closer to having a workable Airport template? At present, I'm not sure I can see a clear consensus. --Nick (talk) 20:23, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

No..

Look at the article and the duplication in the headings, I'd go for..

Understand

Flights

Ground Transportation => Car rental, trains, road connections.

Get around => Transit, Transfers, Entrance to Gate, Gate to Baggage Claim.

Wait => Lounges, playgrounds, observation platforms

Eat and drink

Buy => souvenirs, atms

Connect

Sleep

Nearby => Pointers to facilities accessible, but not in, the airport. Nearby towns, activities.

In particular, Go Next, and Arrival/Departure seem to be real problems. --Inas (talk) 04:13, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I like Inas' suggestion, particularly "Wait". I'd rename "Ground transportation" to "Get in" and "Nearby" to "Go next" just to keep in sync with other templates, even though they aren't perfect headings (also true for other articles...). "Cope" probably also makes sense as a standard heading since chapels, luggage storage and similar services are important for air travel and present in any airport that would be deserving of its own article, but overall if we have to pick a template and run with it then I'm supportive of this proposal. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:31, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Get in can mean by plane or by ground, and I really think the planes are best kept separate from the trains and buses. If you check the original article, this bit was a mess.

Go next look at the article now, where it says - anywhere in the world. We don't want that. We want to capture that alternative to the airport, that is a short trip a way and an alternative to eating airport food and watching runways?

Cope, happy with that. --Inas (talk) 04:46, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Inas is right, and has cogently illustrated why "Go next" is an unhelpful subheading in this context and does not serve the traveler. We need to be flexible and adopt headings that are most useful for the traveler. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:00, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, objections withdrawn if it helps move this to implementation. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:23, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm also content with Inas's suggestions if they move things forward - particularly as you already know I don't think many of our readers will be too bothered about sticking to our usual "house style" for section titles - and I really do believe it's better to have them as clear as possible. I reiterate that, as far as our editors are concerned, I'm now convinced that it is actually advantageous to have different section titles from our "normal" destination articles to make editors actually go and read (what will still presumably be) a slightly different set of style and formatting guidelines for Airport articles.

Please don't forget to add Transit to the proposed template - that's truly vital for a hell of a lot of passengers that need to know about Visa, Customs and Security issues! (For example, economy class passengers from AKL on NZ002 transiting through LAX, and continuing their flight to LHR on the very same aircraft and flight NZ002, really do need to know they can't access any Frequent Traveller lounge and will need to be fingerprinted and photographed and formally enter the US only to formally leave the US a few minutes later and will have no access to any facilities either airside or landside during what may be a two hour "transit" if the flight arrives early and leaves late!) -- Alice^✉ 06:58, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

How about "Fly in" and "Fly out" for arrivals and departures? As Alice said - "Transit" would certainly be a very important section in cases such as the one she mentioned. "Nearby" sounds like a quite good name for points of interest near the airport. "Go next" doesn't really fit because I could imagine that travelers on a layover would stay in the same district as the airport - those who indeed have time to go further away (e.g. to the downtown) could look up the information in the Downtown article and so on. (BTW "Go next - anywhere in the world" reminded me of the traditional April Fool's Day article) Ypsilon (talk) 16:55, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I've edited the Frankfurt Airport article according to the above headings, though I confess it is a bit of a hatchet job. Any thoughts? --Nick (talk) 20:45, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I think it is an improvement. Maybe should try it out on a couple of other existing airport articles. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I still don't think it is good enough. There is duplicated and misplaced info everywhere. Lets get this one right, and then seek support that airport articles work. --Inas (talk) 22:30, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

In the interest of getting this going again I made some edits that seemed to make sense. I've added a sub-section of "Wait" for airline lounges, removed hotel listings that aren't on the airport property in accordance with the Wikivoyage:Don't tout "one listing only" rule, and consolidated the inbound/outbound information under "Ground transportation" to be consistent with how that's handled elsewhere on the site - we don't separate inbound and outbound highways, or inbound and outbound trains, and I don't think it's helpful to do so for airports. Feedback and further edits welcome so that we can move this forward and try it out with other airports. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

One comment, not on the structure but on deletion of hotel listings. If hotels are not on-site but still service the airport (and are not as expensive as the ones at the airport) are removed from the article, they should be added to another location. It was not touting, we have now just lost useful information.Traveler100 (talk) 05:36, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

You mean the hotels aren't already listed in the city where they're located? Are you sure? If not, please go ahead and add them there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The towns did not have pages (not exactly tourist locations). I have created the locations and added the hotels. When I find some time I will add a couple of restaurants, to what are currently very basic articles. Have not yet done the ones in districts of Frankfurt. Not sure they deserve separate pages but placing them in the Frankfurt article without loosing the connection to airport hotels needs some thinking about.Traveler100 (talk) 07:08, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The Frankfurt article is now looking much better - are we any closer to an airport template? This expedition seems to have come to a halt of late. I've also been working on an article for Manchester Airport, which I know rather better. It's still a work in progress though! --Nick (talk) 23:03, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Agree the Frankfurt and Manchester Airport articles are now at usable status. I think the title and subsection organisation is good enough now to define as an article template. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:40, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

So should airports be tagged as cities with {{outlinecity}} and {{usablecity}} or should we create a new tag type such as outlineairport and starairport. Alternatively make it a little less specific such as port or hub in case there are any sea ports or bus terminals that are notable enough to be useful to travellers. Traveler100 (talk) 09:38, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

outlineport sounds good to me! --Nick (talk) 12:23, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Moving forward

At this point it seems like there is agreement that:

1. Airport articles are appropriate for large airports that serve connecting flights (and thus a person might be spending several hours at the airport) and that have enough eating and shopping options to fill out a "Buy" and "Eat and Drink" section.
2. While the Frankfurt airport article could still use some work, the template for it is what we would like to use for airport articles.

Does that seem accurate? If so, let's request further feedback in the Pub and Wikivoyage:Requests for comment, and provided there aren't objections we can then update Wikivoyage:What is an article and Wikivoyage:Article templates. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:55, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Seems accurate to me, pending any demurrals. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

That sounds about right to me. --Nick (talk) 10:07, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

→ Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub#RFC: Airport article criteria and template. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:13, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry, but these criteria do not make much sense to me, because: i) most airports have at least one shop and one cafe; ii) most airports are places where "a person might be spending several hours" (e.g., waiting for an early morning flight). Previously, I have mentioned that airports like Tallinn do not merit their own articles, but the proposed criteria would facilitate the creation of stub articles about these and even smaller airports. --Alexander (talk) 20:41, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I think the criteria here would mean that airports would have to have a number of shops and place to eat. I'm also not sure that articles that people create for airports necessarily have to fit particularly strict criteria - as long as they help the traveller and are long enough to fill a separate article, but too long to fit comfortably into the article for the town/city they serve, then it's probably worth making an article about it. Any thoughts? --Nick (talk) 20:55, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I believe that the only working criterion is the amount of information already present in the city article. This can be, for example, the length limit of four paragraphs, or an equivalent word count. --Alexander (talk) 21:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

How about as a proportion of the entire article or the 'Get in' section - more than 1/2 of the 'Get in' section? --Nick (talk) 21:31, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

There has been a fair amount of discussion already on this subject, and the point has been made that there is value in having articles for large airports regardless of how much content was already placed in a city article. As Nick says, an airport with a single food option won't pass the test of "enough information for an "Eat and Drink" section. Similarly, the requirement that the airport service connecting flights eliminates the vast majority of small airports that are only used as initial departure or final destination stops. As a result, I don't think throwing out the criteria that we have already discussed is a good idea - tweak them if needed, but let's not start over from scratch. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:49, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you're right Ryan - the criteria that have been outlined are workable in my opinion. If we do have any problems, we can always add more. --Nick (talk) 22:09, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Then I don't understand the meaning of "fill out a "Buy" and "Eat and Drink" section". One cafe and one duty-free shop do fill out these sections. And I really see no difference between an airport with sporadic connecting flights and an airport without official connecting flights, but with early morning flights that require you to stay in the airport overnight. Finally, I see a huge problem of allowing hundreds of stub articles about (relatively) small airports that pass these criteria (Tallinn, Riga, Saint Petersburg, Rostov, Sochi, Ekaterinburg, Tyumen, Berlin Tegel, Lyon, Kiev Borispol, Minsk... do you still need more examples?). But I don't see any problem in prohibiting articles about large airports until we have enough information about them. --Alexander (talk) 22:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Would changing the criteria to be "the airport should have multiple restaurant and shopping options" be clearer? Also, regarding "a huge problem of allowing hundreds of stub articles about (relatively) small airports", I disagree that we'll immediately get hundreds of "stub" articles, and also disagree that having articles about airports like Saint Petersburg is a bad thing. Consider:

1. We have thousands of articles about small towns - would Wikivoyage be better off without those articles? If not, then what is the argument for not writing about large airports, most of which have more amenities and relevance to a traveler than a small town would?
2. There are a significant number of people who want to read and write articles about airports. Thousands of web sites are devoted to airline travel, airport lounges, and related topics, and many Wikivoyage users have expressed a desire to write such aritcles. Our premier guide - Chicago - has an airport article about O'Hare International Airport.
3. Our existing criteria for when an airport article is appropriate are relatively subjective ("Singularly huge and complex airports the size of small cities such as Kansai International Airport or Heathrow Airport... but not typical metropolitan or regional airports." - Wikivoyage:What is an article#Exceptions). The proposed criteria would be more broad, but also give us a guideline for airport article creation that is at least as clear as the "can you sleep there" test.
4. As someone noted earlier, having an airport article also allows us to consolidate information that might be copied into any number of articles about areas served by that airport. For example, today if you're writing about LAX, you're likely going to have to put that information into just about every article for cities and regions in Los Angeles County, making it more difficult for people who want information specifically about LAX to find it.
5. Finally, regarding the argument that airport information should always be in city articles, for years we've pruned lengthy airport information from city articles when it began getting too long rather than splitting it out into a separate article. The only times I'm aware that anyone has ever started an airport article, it was one that someone created from scratch.

We've got a relatively clear set of criteria and a committed group of people saying that airport articles are something they want to see Wikivoyage support, and I think it's a sign of a growing site when we expand our coverage in a structured and agreed-upon way. In addition, we've had several months of discussion on the subject and attempted to address outstanding concerns. I think everyone involved is willing to try to address any remaining concerns, but there should also be a responsibility for those who are skeptical to remain open to trying new things and work to find mutually-agreeable solutions. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:39, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Ryan, have you every been to Pulkovo, Saint Petersburg airport? It is a stinking hole (well, in fact, two stinking holes, because it has two terminals) and a shame of this nice city. Moreover, if you say we need a separate article about it, we also need articles about five main train stations (each of the same size as the airport), and of course separate articles about Hermitage, Russian Museum, etc.

"Multiple restaurant and shopping options" sounds as vague to me, because three cafes already means "multiple", and all small airports of my concern pass these criteria as well. I simply suggest that we do not create new airport articles until we have enough information for them. That's all. I don't suggest to forbid such articles completely, but I want to make sure that each of these new articles is well-motivated. In my opinion, this is a very simple, workable, and consistent approach to any articles about non-geographical destinations, like airports, train stations, museums, etc. --Alexander (talk) 08:17, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid I agree with Ryan here - we are extremely unlikely to be deluged with hundreds of stub article for tiny airstrips around the world when this policy comes into force. I think it's better to air on the side of freedom than to rigidly control what people write. If an airport article is deemed too small or insignificant, we can always merge it back into its city. --Nick (talk) 08:33, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

No stub airport articles will be merged back into their cities, because the proposed criteria are too soft, and most airports fulfill them. And the problem is more general. As soon as many airports deserve their own articles, train stations merit them as well. Then come museums (yes, you can't stay in the museum overnight, but you can find a hotel nearby), big shopping malls, and so on.

Anyway, you requested for the comment, and you have got one. That's all from my side. --Alexander (talk) 09:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that we can ignore the possibility of people creating loads of articles about tiny airports. On Wikipedia it looks like every railway station in the UK has an article, including those with almost no facilities like [2]. So I would suggest that we have a criteria based on the flights operating from the airport. So we only have articles about airports with more than 20 departures per day to more than 5 destinations including 1 which is over 2000 miles (3000 km) away. This would include almost all airports used for connections (and where the traveler is not interested in a city guide). AlasdairW (talk) 14:43, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I very much like adding the "number of flights" restriction and "number of destinations" restriction, and might suggest we use higher numbers - what about 50 daily flights and 20 destinations? 20 flights would mean an approximate average of only one flight per hour, so a larger number should definitely eliminate most small airports. The "2000 miles away" restriction might be trickier since routes change frequently and tiny, remote airports will have longer routes than busy airports in densely-populated areas.

To Alexander, the feedback is appreciated, although I'm concerned that many discussions here get derailed when people's contributions are essentially "I don't support that" rather than "these are my concerns and here are some suggestions to address them". In this case, if the concern is that we'll get too many airport articles that are of dubious value, suggestions for tightening creation criteria to reduce that possibility would be hugely helpful. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:16, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that I have come up with the most simple suggestion: to start a separate article about an airport as soon as its description becomes too long (4-5 paragraphs is a good threshold, I believe). I really have nothing else to say here. --Alexander (talk) 16:06, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps combine the two, but keep it vague and see what happens?

Airport articles should be created when the facility in question has outgrown the 'Get in' section of the city it serves and/or if the airport serves more than 20 different destinations and hosts 50 daily departures. --Nick (talk) 22:50, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I do like Alexander's idea, but I think the threshold should be something like airport size (ex. Intercontinental airport? Yes. Municipal Airport that has 1 airline? No.).

I am repeatedly trying to explain that different parts of the world host very different airports. You may easily have a small airport with a large number of departures (Berlin Tegel, Riga), but we also have big train stations, which exceed these airports in size (again, Berlin is a good example). There are many borderline cases that should be treated on a consensus basis, and it is much easier to build consensus about every new article of this type rather than to develop stringent criteria (number of cafes, flights, passengers) that won't cover all possible situations. --Alexander (talk) 09:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a series of guidelines, as well as the suggestion that consensus is desirable? My only fear with seeking consensus for every article is that it slow things down a lot. Either way, it would be nice to get this sorted sooner rather than later. --Nick (talk) 16:15, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Bump - are we any closer to making this policy 'live' now? --Nick (talk) 21:54, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we need a few more example articles -- a yellow light rather than green, if you will. If that will help Wikivoyagers become more comfortable with the idea. I'd be willing to take a stab at Orlando International Airport, for instance. LtPowers (talk) 23:01, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

If you'd be willing to do that, that would be great! That would then give us 3 demo articles (Frankfurt, Manchester and Orlando), as well as the 3 (I think!) pre-existing huge ones. :) --Nick (talk) 23:08, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Do we now need to try and bring the (edit:) 4 'huge' articles in to line with the new template? --Nick (talk) 12:48, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Article criteria

There don't seem to be any further objections raised to the template, but several objections were made to the proposed criteria for when an airport article is appropriate. I'm opposed to the "never unless there is consensus to create it" criteria or "only create when the info in the city article gets huge" suggestion for reasons outlined in the previous section, but grabbing some other suggestions from above and increasing the "number of daily flights" number a bit, how about:

Airport articles are appropriate for singularly huge and complex airports the size of small cities such as Kansai International Airport or Heathrow Airport, but not typical metropolitan or regional airports. Some specific guidelines as to when an airport merits its own article:

• It should serve at least 100 daily flights, some of which must be connecting flights.
• It must have several food and shopping options available; if the airport does not have enough amenities to fill out a "Buy" and "Eat and Drink" section then it does not merit its own article.

Does that seem better? That should limit the number of article-worthy airports while still making it easier to create articles about places like LAX or SFO without requiring a bureaucratic consensus-building process. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:22, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I believe that you are opening Pandora's box by allowing articles about shopping malls with more than 100 stores and 1000 customers, hospitals with more than 100 beds, and traffic junctions with more than 3 levels. And I have not seen any clear argument as to why we can't reach consensus on every particular article of this type. In my opinion, this will be far easier than any general discussion. But if you insist, I have no problem to step back. --Alexander (talk) 06:36, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Reaching consensus on every article is not going to be a speedy business - I think something like Ryan has suggested is probably the way to go. These criteria are solely for airports; if, at some point in the future, the community decides to allow articles for shopping centres, hospitals, or indeed car parks, then that should result from another lengthy discussion; I shouldn't think this would affect it in any way.

The only thing I might change in the criteria is the first bit of text, as it doesn't seem to quite correlate with the bullet points. How about this:

Airport articles are appropriate for large and very large airports that serve a large area (e.g. Frankfurt Airport, Heathrow), but not for typical metropolitan or regional airports. Some specific guidelines as to when an airport merits its own article:

Is that alright? --Nick (talk) 09:58, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

The initial text is actually taken verbatim from Wikivoyage:What is an article#Exceptions, so ideally it would be good to change that as little as possible. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:17, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok then, let's leave it as is! I'm happy with those criteria. :) --Nick (talk) 23:52, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Shall we implement this then? I'm happy to do it if we're ready. --Nick (talk) 22:13, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

*bump* -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:35, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I say go ahead and implement it. JamesA ^>talk 07:27, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Is it worth now ploughing on with this - do we have sufficient consensus? As above, I'm happy to implement if we're ready. --Nick (talk) 12:29, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Should we put this is in 'Exceptions' in wiaa or in 'What does get its own article?'? --Nick (talk) 13:11, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

One final point: could we alter that first sentence ever so slightly to reflect a little more of where we are? I wouldn't say that Orlando or Manchester airports are 'singularly' huge - could we not scale that down a bit?--Nick (talk) 18:44, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

The deed is done - rejoice! --Nick (talk) 20:53, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

RFC: Airport article criteria and template

Swept in from the pub

The Wikivoyage:Airport Expedition is at a point now where a proposal for creating airport articles and a template for those articles has reached some consensus. The criteria for airport articles would be that the airport services connecting flights and has enough food and shopping options to fill out an entire "Buy" and "Eat and Drink" section, which should limit these articles to only large airports where travelers will find an airport guide useful.

The template can be viewed at Wikivoyage:Airport Expedition#Template and in a live article at Frankfurt airport. We already allow articles for large airports, but this would make airport articles less of an exception and also update the template used to include more things that flyers are looking for, like information about airport lounges, airlines, and airport transportation. Please provide your feedback at Wikivoyage talk:Airport Expedition. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:13, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Is this page of any use to the expedition?

I found this page here on WV quite by accident. It appears to be a worldwide list of cities and their corresponding airports - is this something we can use perhaps: either as a future basis for a directory (admittedly some (a lot) of the airports listed look fairly small and not deserving of articles) or just a means of considering which airports to tackle? Any thoughts? --Nick (talk) 22:21, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I've copied its contents here. --Nick (talk) 23:23, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Conversion or Co-existence?

What would be the best way to deal with the four pre-existing airport articles? Should we change them to fit the new template or leave them as they are? --Nick (talk) 23:47, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I think they should be updated to the new format. —The preceding comment was added by Traveler100 (talk • contribs)

Target Areas

Working on the presumption that some suitable criteria are agreed upon (see above), which airports should be our priority to create new articles for? I would suggest JFK, Charles De Gaulle, Schiphol, Dallas Fort-Worth and Hong Kong would be good starting points. Any other suggestions? Also, could we perhaps work a Collaboration of the Month into this somehow? --Nick (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll throw Singapore and Sydney into the ring, though I haven't had much time to write. I see Changi has been voted top airport again :) so plenty to write about, plus Sydney would be a major one in Oceania and it is way too complex trying to get to/from the airport. The main puzzle is how much info would remain within the main city article itself, so do we wing it, or write up some guidelines for that? -- Torty3 (talk) 00:59, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Newark and Atlanta are also huge airports. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:22, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like good suggestions for airports. As I said above, articles about airports would be especially useful for those who are transferring from one flight to another. That's why I'd definitely like to add LAX (major transfer airport between Trans Pacific and intra North American flights) and Dubai (Europe/Africa and Asia/Oceania) to the list. Ypsilon (talk) 16:18, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree - they're all good suggestions. I'd like (at some point) to find a way to make this a workable COTM as we have a lot of areas to cover. If no-one else has commented on the criteria (above) by this evening I'll implement them and we'll get started. --Nick (talk) 16:57, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I think on the same basis that Ypsilon mentions LAX and Dubai, Miami is a hub for a lot of flights across the Caribbean and, therefore, transfers from places elsewhere in the US, Canada, Europe, etc. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:18, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest that at least initially, rather than trying to get an article started for specific airports that we instead let people with good knowledge create articles for airports they know well - for my part, time permitting I'm anxious to start one on LAX as it is a huge airport that I use frequently, and I think other frequent fliers here will feel similarly about their local airport. General consensus in the past has been that one or two well-developed articles are far more valuable than a few dozen skeletons, so I think we want to follow that precedent and focus on letting people create articles about airports they know well rather than approaching the issue by trying to tackle major airports that we might not have much direct knowledge about. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely Ryan, you're right. I don't intend to start any of these articles, only add them to the 'Future targets' list so people can see where we're aiming. I'd hope that people who know these airports well would be prepared to pick one off the list and perhaps plunge forward, whilst people who don't could choose airports with which they are familiar and build them up. --Nick (talk) 22:37, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Here's some more worth considering. This list is based on w:World's busiest airports by passenger traffic and busiest by continent list combined with my best guess as to which airports have the most international (and domestic for the U.S. since it's huge and English-speaking) connecting traffic—the most likely demographic to need a useful guide to the airport—and those airports which are major hubs. Bold are the most-needed guides, italics are for major airports with a large volume of origin/destination passengers, Bolded/italicised airports are major hubs which also have a significant amount of O/D traffic. Airports for which articles already exist or are already listed as "future targets" aren't included. They are listed by importance (in my opinion).

• US: Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (American Airlines, Southwest), Washington-Dulles International Airport (United), Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (Delta), Denver International Airport (United, Frontier), Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (US Airways), San Francisco International Airport (United), LaGuardia Airport (New York...American, Delta, JetBlue), Houston-Bush Intercontinental Airport (United), Charlotte International Airport (US Airways), McCarran International Airport (Las Vegas...Southwest), Philadelphia International Airport (US Airways), Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport (Delta), Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (Delta)
• Canada: Toronto Pearson International Airport, Montreal-Trudeau International Airport
• Central America: Benito Juárez International Airport (Mexico City...2nd busiest in Latin America), Tocumen International Airport (Copa Airlines hub)
• South America: São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport (busiest in Latin America), Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport, Benítez International Airport (Santiago...LAN hub), El Dorado International Airport (Bogota), Pistarini International Airport (Buenos Aires), Jorge Chávez International Airport (Lima)
• Africa: O.R. Tambo International Airport (Johannesburg...busiest in Africa), Bole International Airport (Addis Ababa...Ethiopian Airlines hub), Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (Nairobi...Kenya Airways hub), Cairo International Airport (2nd busiest in Africa), Mohammed V International Airport (Casablanca...Royal Air Maroc hub)
• Europe: Barajas Airport (Madrid...Iberia hub), London Gatwick Airport, Munich Airport, Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport (Rome), Domodedovo International Airport (Moscow), Copenhagen Airport-Kastrup, Zürich Airport, Sheremetyevo International Airport (Moscow)
• Middle East: Atatürk International Airport (Istanbul...Turkish Airlines hub), Doha International Airport (Qatar Airways hub), Ben Gurion Airport (Tel Aviv)
• South/Eastern Asia: Beijing Capital International Airport (busiest airport in Asia), Tokyo-Narita Airport (All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, Delta, & United hub), Seoul-Incheon International Airport, Guangzhou-Baiyun International Airport, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport (Jakarta), Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (Mumbai), Shanghai-Pudong International Airport, Suvarnabhumi Airport (Bangkok)
• Oceania: Melbourne Airport, Auckland Airport

AHeneen (talk) 04:26, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Take-off!

I've now changed the policy following the above discussion, so we're now free to go ahead and create more suitable airport articles. Please feel free to plunge forward! --Nick (talk) 20:58, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Top 100 airports?

These guys [3] are giving awards. Interesting that Vancouver is the only North American airport in the top twenty. Pashley (talk) 12:03, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

It really is quite interesting! It looks like airports in Asia are doing particularly well. Could this be a useful list to plan which articles to make next? --Nick (talk) 19:05, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

New Tag Type

Is there any future in this idea? Copied from above:

So should airports be tagged as cities with {{outlinecity}} and {{usablecity}} or should we create a new tag type such as outlineairport and starairport. Alternatively make it a little less specific such as port or hub in case there are any sea ports or bus terminals that are notable enough to be useful to travellers. Traveler100 (talk) 09:38, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Personally I do like the sound of of outlineport - any thoughts? --Nick (talk) 15:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

There is a related discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Article templates#Island articles status tags. I don't think that status tags for airports need to be a priority right now, but if/when we have more of them then new status tags will almost certainly be needed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:10, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, outlineairport, etc. That would be my vote.Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:17, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

How about "transit"?

• "Template:outlinetransit" This transit-related article is an outline and needs more content. It has a template, but there is not enough information present. Please plunge forward and help it grow!

• "Template:useabletransit" This is a usable article. It gives a good overview of the facility, routes/destinations served, how to get in/around, and points/objects of interest to persons traveling through this facility. An adventurous person could use this article, but please plunge forward and help it grow!

• "Template:guidetransit" This is a guide article. It has well developed information throughout the entire article. Plunge forward and help us make it a star!

• "Template:startransit" This is a star article. It is a high-quality article complete with maps, photos, and great information about the transit facility. If you know of something that has changed, please plunge forward and help it grow! Could replace "transit facility" with a parameter for facility name, eg. {{startransit|airport}}.

Only problem would be the exact wording of the template so that it can be applicable to airports, ports, railroad stations, significant bus terminals, and significant intermodal terminals. For example, using the term "routes" instead of "flights" and permitting the section header to be renamed to "Flights" or "Destinations" (my preference) for airports, "Services" for intermodal terminals, & "Lines" for railroad stations. AHeneen (talk) 03:19, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think we have any consensus to start writing non-airport transit articles. LtPowers (talk) 13:52, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't either, and I can't think of any bus terminal/trains stations/etc. big and complex enough to even consider it. I do, however, think we should get a tag going for airports sooner rather than later, and I'd say just to use "outlineairport", "usableairport", etc. Even if we did end up sometime in the future deciding that we want other types of transit hub articles, they likely wouldn't be of the same template type.Texugo (talk) 20:06, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree - "outlineairport" sounds better; let's go with that. --Nick (talk) 20:20, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Tags created, summary of templates and categories at Wikivoyage:Article status stats. The Wikivoyage:Airport guide status needs some work as I simply copied it from the city one. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:56, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Main article summaries

Is this considered an acceptable level of summary for main articles when pulling out the airport information? If "By plane" sections as useless as this are going to be the result of this expedition, then we should seriously reconsider whether we should be making airport articles at all. LtPowers (talk) 20:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Chicago#By plane passed a star nomination, and thus seems like the obvious example to follow when writing a "By plane" section for a city with a separate airport article. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Ryan's right - Chicago provides an excellent example. The NYC one probably is a bit short at present, but we'll sort it out. --Nick (talk) 20:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

That's about the minimum amount of information I would expect. The NYC one is more than "a bit" short, it's been absolutely gutted. That should not be acceptable. LtPowers (talk) 17:46, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm just trying to stay positive about other people's work. What would you like to see covered in the 'By plane' sections of affected articles? We probably do need some guidelines on this issue. --Nick (talk) 18:10, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The same information we put in any other By plane section, just with less detail than we might normally use. The JFK blurb should explain what it is, where it's located, how to get there (in less detail than in the airport article), and the top few airlines that fly in and out. It should also speak to what kind of amenities are available in the immediate area, if not within the airport itself. LtPowers (talk) 18:24, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

There should probably be a prominent "For more information see: airport article." or "See airport article for more details." so that people glancing through realize there's a separate article. This is especially important for people printing or saving an electronic copy for offline use. AHeneen (talk) 03:16, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Don't forget to link!

Hey guys, so if we are going to be creating all these airport articles, it's important that we remember to link them, not just from the city which shares its name or whatever, but from all the other suburbs and nearby destinations that mention the airport in their Get in sections. Texugo (talk) 20:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. We also need to change redirects that don't point to the new articles but the 'By plane' section of a city. --Nick (talk) 21:13, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I've frequently created a link in city pages to the nearest major airport as [[cityname#By plane|airport name]] or [[cityname#airportname|airport name]]. To allow for airport articles that, if created today, would only be stubs but are likely to be created in the future, would it be appropriate to go ahead and create a large number of redirects? For example, Charlotte Douglas International Airport so that articles can link to that and be taken to Charlotte#By plane but allow for the airport article to be written in the future without much issue?

On a related note, how can I easily search for "Cityname#By plane" or "Cityname#airportname", especially if it is hidden (ie. [[city#by plane|airport name]])?? Entering that in the search leads directly to the section. Using a search engine to search "site:en.wikivoyage.org" wouldn't hit on these hidden links. AHeneen (talk) 03:21, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

On another related note, when creating a new airport article (or any other article), be sure to add a link to the corresponding Wikipedia article under the "External links" section using either w:Template:Sister project links or w:Template:Wikivoyage-inline. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Article Archaeology

I've just been through some of the articles we're working on at the moment and it looks like, in several cases, it's well worth going back through the revision history as many pages have been created and then cleared before the new airports policy came into effect, so there is information out there that we can salvage. Whilst some of it may be out of date, it's a good way to build up a good 'bed' of content quickly. --Nick (talk) 00:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Airlines & destinations

One of the most useful things on Wikipedia airport articles is the table of airlines & destinations (example), which I've used countless times to write "Get in#By plane" and "Get around#By plane" sections for cities, countries, and a continent as well as for personal reference. Tables like these would be a valuable reference for our guides. How about a paragraph or two highlighting major routes or odd cases, like "there are just 3 flights a week on Big Airline to Paradise Island" or "The busiest route out of Major Airport is to City A - a major hub for Airlines A & B that connect this airport with many major world destinations. It is served by 6 airlines and 18 flights per day!" as well as highlighting airline hubs and destinations. Then follow with a subsection titled "Routes" or "Airlines and destinations", which would contain a table just like Wikipedia. The Aviation WikiProject is great at keeping these lists up-to-date even for the smallest of airports and in the most remote corners of the globe. Some day, this would be a great subject to synch with WP via Wikidata. AHeneen (talk) 03:39, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely! Tables listing the airlines and their destinations would be really good if they're up to date - especially budget airlines frequently remove and add destinations. Ypsilon (talk) 15:19, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Which is why I'm reluctant to include them; in this case, out-of-date information may be worse than no information at all. Keeping them up to date could be a tall order. LtPowers (talk) 15:56, 27 April 2013 (UTC);;

I second that reluctance. I might feel different if it could be linked to WP someday, giving us a much larger group of people updating.Texugo (talk) 16:14, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, for now links to Wikipedia are not permitted. Could an exception be made in this case, if you feel out-of-date information may be a problem? Anyone able to write a bot to keep these lists up-to-date? AHeneen (talk) 22:39, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

That does sound like a nice idea - I too have found those tables very useful when travelling. Is it do-able? --Nick (talk) 23:19, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

An example has been placed in Orlando International Airport#Flights. The only issue may be that ticketing locations and phone numbers don't really belong in a section titled "flights", but it wouldn't make sense to add a second table with this info. Thoughts? AHeneen (talk) 00:47, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it's too much, personally. It's useful information to have, yes, but it's also readily available from other sources, and it's subject to change without much notice. LtPowers (talk) 01:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Is it really useful to list all destinations of an airport? The reason I believe not is that this is information that will inevitably get out of date quickly, whereas the official web page of the airport will always have the latest information. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:44, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Month

Would this expedition and/or some of the aspects it covers make a good candidate for CotM? It would be quite nice to see a 'big bang' of activity on articles of this kind to get us going and improve that articles that have already been created. --Nick (talk) 20:37, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, of course. LtPowers (talk) 21:05, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest we wait at least 1-2 months so that we can gain some experience creating good airport articles before unleashing the masses. For example, it will be good to have questions like the one above about flight tables considered, as well as other issues that come up in the initial airport article creation process. Once we've got a handful of airport articles at guide status I think it will be safer to invite the masses to use them as guides to create more articles, which should lead to a more successful COTM. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:34, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense; I think I'll withdraw that nomination. --Nick (talk) 21:24, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Optional 'Stay safe' section

A couple of the articles we've made so far (Singapore Changi Airport and OR Tambo International Airport) have optional stay safe sections, which seems a good idea. However, they're in different places in each article (above 'Nearby' in OR Tambo; below it in Singapore) - where would they fit best? --Nick (talk) 22:58, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

My vote would be for above it, to be consistent with our other article templates. PerryPlanet (talk) 23:10, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we should match our usual section order as closely as possible, per Wikivoyage:Article templates/Sections. LtPowers (talk) 02:17, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I've moved the one in Singapore up. --Nick (talk) 09:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Secondary Airports

Many large cities have secondary airports that handle mostly domestic routes and also a few international routes.

These secondary airports take up some space on the page of the city, whereas the primary airport needs to redirect the user to a separate page.

Assuming the secondary airport is significant enough, there any thoughts as to how these secondary airports could be managed?

Examples include:

City	Primary Airport	Primary Airport Wikivoyage Page?	Secondary Airport	Secondary Airport Wikivoyage Page?
Seoul	Incheon	Yes	Gimpo	No
Shanghai	Pudong	Yes	Hongqiao	No
Tokyo	Narita	Yes	Haneda	No
London	Heathrow	Yes	Gatwick	No
New York	JFK and Newark	Yes	LaGuardia	No

--Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:02, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to treat the secondary airports any differently. If they're big enough to qualify for an article, then they get an article; otherwise, their information is placed in the city article. LtPowers (talk) 11:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I think LtPowers is right - if they fit our criteria, then they deserve an article, even if articles for other airports in that city already exist. :) --Nick (talk) 12:29, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

To me it looks a little strange that a city article would have more lines of text to its secondary airport than its primary airport. Nevertheless, if nobody has a good way to address it then I agree to leave them as they are. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:41, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I think the suggestion is that these would probably be worthy candidates for their own articles. I'm most familiar with LaGuardia Airport, and I certainly think it's used enough to be worthy of its own article, even though, unfortunately (because it's closest to the city and most convenient for me), it's becoming more difficult to find inexpensive flights to and from there. I will leave you to your own judgment on the others, but I would definitely consider Gatwick worthy of its own article. It's London's second airport, and there's actually another airport named Stansted that I flew to Belfast from, via Ryanair, in 2010. A Stansted Airport article would not be a priority because it's a relatively small airport (though not tiny), but I doubt anyone would object to a Gatwick Airport article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:52, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why the secondary airport text would be longer than the primary airport text in the main article. Even with the primary airport having an article of its own, the information there should be summarized in the city article just like airports without articles. LtPowers (talk) 03:13, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The reason is that there's information in "Get in/By plane" for the secondary airport that would be moved to a dedicated airport article that hasn't been created yet, whereas similar information about the primary airport(s), which was originally longer, was already moved to an airport article, with only a brief summary remaining. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:49, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Ikan, much better explanation than mine. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:34, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Again, I don't see why. The "brief summary" should include exactly the same information as a permanent summary that doesn't link to another article. LtPowers (talk) 14:37, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I think the reason this hasn't been adopted is that there is no consistency between our permanent summaries. Some are extremely long and almost usurp the article they form a part of; others consist of just a few lines. I think when splitting in to a new article, the summary on the city page should be closer to the latter. To my mind, we need to give a brief overview of the airport, the airlines that serve it and a quick mention of facilities, alongside a special emphasis on getting between the airport and the city in question. --Nick ^talk 14:47, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

London is an interesting example, since Gatwick is in fact a Primary airport in its own right. Stansted is also a significant airport in its own right and not really a secondary airport either. I'd say they each merit their own page. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:34, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I would agree. The only problem I could foresee with a Stansted article is that, unless things have changed much since 2010, there isn't much there other than a terminal (just one, I seem to remember). I don't remember much in the way of amenities, and it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. So while I certainly wouldn't mind a Stansted Airport article, I think there are quite a lot of other airports that are more in need of coverage here, very much including Gatwick. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:20, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with all of the above. I think Stansted probably could support its own article (there's a lot of material) in London, but it's probably not a priority for the moment. --Nick (talk) 10:26, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Size vs importance

I really think that it would be better to classify airports based on relative importance rater than size, as far as the tourists using wikivoyage. For now it's probably best to put in airports serving major destinations and connecting flights. We also might want to focus on hard-to navigate ones. Also, I would like to complement the people who came up with using Wikipedia. the airport articles are pretty good there.

How would you suggest we judge importance? Also, please sign your username like with 4 tildes in a row this when you post to talk pages: ~~~~ Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:00, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi there! Welcome aboard! So far we have been trying to combine both of those aspects when choosing airports to work on, but editors' familiarity with a particular airport is also important. The airports in our 'Future targets' list are generated by a multi-million dollar proprietary algorithm picked from a number suggested on this talk page (above) by other users and marked for their importance. Articles of this nature are fairly new here, but we're working through a good number and you can see our progress on the expedition page itself. If you've any thoughts on good airports to aim for, please do let us know, or plunge forward and create an article yourself. :)

As for Wikipedia, we are keen to distance ourselves somewhat from that project as well as taking advantage of what is available there. We aim to have a very different written style and the templates we use are also a major break from what is used over there. Despite this, we do recognise that some things there can be really useful (particularly items that actually fit better here than there) and articles there can be very informative when writing our guides.

It's great to hear from you and I do hope you consider creating a user account so we can give you credit for what's rightfully yours! Cheers! --Nick ^talk 01:08, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

London City and Luton Airports

In the discussion that resulted in the inception of this project, Alexander expressed serious doubts about the possibility of lots of stub articles about small airports. Here's one salient remark:

"I am repeatedly trying to explain that different parts of the world host very different airports. You may easily have a small airport with a large number of departures (Berlin Tegel, Riga), but we also have big train stations, which exceed these airports in size (again, Berlin is a good example). There are many borderline cases that should be treated on a consensus basis, and it is much easier to build consensus about every new article of this type rather than to develop stringent criteria (number of cafes, flights, passengers) that won't cover all possible situations."

I mentioned above that I thought it would be fine for there to be an article about London Stansted Airport, but that it was not a priority. The article was started, and I already like it and see that it is useful (in particular, the "Sleeping at Stansted Airport" infobox has information that travellers can really use), though of course it is a work in progress. Then an article was started about London Luton Airport. No consensus had been reached; a user just plunged forward and started the article. I think the jury's out on just how good or useful the article may be when more work is done on it. But now, with an article having been started on London's 5th airport, London City Airport, I have to call into question just how well our efforts at reaching a consensus are going. With all due appreciation for the initiative that people are taking, and a general tip of the hat to all of you who are doing such great work on this project, I think that before more work is done on the London City Airport article, it would be best if those of us who are knowledgeable about that airport (which doesn't include me - I never heard of it) would discuss just how important or large that airport is. But I will end by saying that if Alexander doesn't think there should be an article on Tegel, which remains the main airport for the metropolis of Berlin until Brandenburg Airport is finally finished, I feel sure he is shaking his head about the articles about Luton Airport and London City Airport (though of course he can speak for himself if he so chooses).

So have at it: London City Airport, yes or no, and why or why not? And let's have the same discussion about Luton Airport. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:35, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Not yet, or at least not a priority - I'm loath to say never on matters such as this, but I'm not sure Luton or City Airports are truly large enough for their own specific articles. Luton is a small-ish airport served mainly by low-cost and charter airlines (not unlike Liverpool John Lennon Airport, which is yet to get its own article). London City is a small commuter airport in central London which offers largely domestic and short-haul routes with the odd international flight (I think BA offers a service to New York from there). Neither airport is huge or even large, although I dare say a case could be made for their existence. My reaction would be this: keep them for a week as they are. If the articles are not full/nearly full and remain fairly blank stubs, we merge them back into London. If they've grown exponentially and are of use, we should probably keep them, but make our policy on here clearer - that, at least for now, we are focussing on large airports and are not yet seeking to give every airport in the world its own entry. --Nick ^talk 12:28, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I thought that already was made clear. It's just that some people have plunged forward without trying to gain a consensus. I salute them for their initiative but think that we do want to prevent things from spiraling out of control. I'm OK with waiting for a week, but I could foresee the possibility that work on small airport articles could result in more content than we'd want to merge back into the city article but not enough for a good airport article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:39, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. Beyond putting BIG AIRPORTS ONLY! at the top of this page I'm not sure we can make it much clearer. I too think it's great that people are getting involved, but you're right, we need to draw the line somewhere. Maybe merge back now then and put a discrete message on people's talk pages? --Nick ^talk 12:45, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I definitely agree that Luton and City shouldn't have their own articles. I thought our approach was going to be that we would only create an article if there was enough that you could say about that airport that it would overwhelm the Get in section. I feel like this has less to do with how "big" an airport is and more with how overwhelming or confusing it is (for instance, Denver is one of the busiest airports in the U.S., but the layout is so intuitive I would never suggest giving it an entire article). Heathrow and Gatwick made sense because they're so massive and busy that they can get confusing, while Stansted made sense because it's so distant that you need to write up a lot of content just about getting there. PerryPlanet (talk) 12:53, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I just found Washington Dulles International Airport, and the content there is way too small to be worth its own article. Oh look, there's a chapel. Whoopee. Either it needs to be expanded greatly, or merged back into Washington, D.C.. LtPowers (talk) 13:53, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad to get a second opinion on that (I was starting to have some doubts about it myself), so I think I will merge the content back to D.C. I recall being really bewildered by the layout of that place and thought it might make a useful article, but now that I look back on it, it does indeed seem unjustified. PerryPlanet (talk) 14:42, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Based on this discussion, I'm going to put merge tags on London City Airport and London Luton Airport. It looks straightforward to simply copy and paste the entirety of the text of London City Airport into the London article, while on a cursory inspection, the Luton Airport info in the London guide should have the first paragraph of the Luton Airport guide added to it and seems to have the rest of the content of the airport article already. Does anyone have any objection to this course of action? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:40, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I think that sounds fair; I'll have a look at how they can be merged now. --Nick ^talk 00:54, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I just looked at the airports section of London above, and it is really long! (Basically scroll down twice on a 24 inch monitor to read it all) Is there anything to be said for a separate 'London Airports' article? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:06, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

My tendency would be to say "no," as we have articles about Heathrow, Gatwick, and Stansted. But perhaps some of that section could be edited or removed for brevity. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:15, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely; that sounds like a good idea to me. I'm sure some bits could be cut. --Nick ^talk 08:14, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Does George Bush Intercontinental Airport qualify?

Does George Bush Intercontinental Airport (Houston airport) deserve an article? I wanted to know before I requested or created it. Does Paris Charles de Gualle qualify? —The preceding comment was added by 68.50.233.28 (talk • contribs)

I don't know enough about Houston to say, but Charles de Gaulle already has an article. PerryPlanet (talk) 16:21, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

It's the 8th busiest airport in the US and 3rd busiest in the US as far as international traffic is concerned. It has five terminals. Does that help? —The preceding comment was added by 68.50.233.28 (talk • contribs)

I guess Houston does qualify. I have never been, although I believe there are many transfers to Latin American destinations through it. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:00, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely! As a major hub for one of the biggest airlines in the world—United—and the primary airport for the 4th largest city in the U.S.—Houston—there are both plenty of connecting passengers as well as origin/destination traffic. AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Is it a large airport and a major transit hub (and preferably, someone has more information to add than just the two lines from the Houston article...), then it deserves its own article. I think Houston airport does. Ypsilon (talk) 19:21, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

To avoid future confusion, the criteria for when it is OK to create an airport article can be found at Wikivoyage:What is an article#Exceptions and is copied below for reference:

Singularly huge and complex airports the size of small cities such as Kansai International Airport or Heathrow Airport (formatted using the Project:Airport article template)

...but not typical metropolitan or regional airports. Some specific guidelines as to when an airport merits its own article:

• It should serve at least 100 daily flights, some of which must be connecting flights.
• It must have several food and shopping options available; if the airport does not have enough amenities to fill out a "Buy" and "Eat and Drink" section then it does not merit its own article.

-- Ryan • (talk) • 19:48, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Ryan, I think we've bent that a little bit already. I don't think London Stansted Airport is the size of a small city, and it's certainly not remotely close to comparable in size to Heathrow, but I think most of us agree that the Stansted Airport article is useful for travellers and too long and detailed to be appropriate as a section of the London guide, in its current (let alone its eventual fully filled-out) form. I think it is appropriate, if there's any possibility for doubt, for an airport to be brought up here for a pro or con consensus, and that's far superior to having people plunge forward with articles about airports that we end up agreeing do not pass the test. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:49, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

As an aside, even those stricter criteria I find questionable. By "several" food options, do we mean a McDonalds, a Panda Express, a Chipotle, a Subway, and a convenience store? Cause that would cover a lot of airports. PerryPlanet (talk) 22:04, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

What about Gimhae International Airport? I don't know if the number of flights qualifies, and the justification given on the talk page was that it is South Korea's third largest airport, but I'm not convinced that "third biggest in a small country" is sufficient. Aside from the relative simple Flights section and the Ground transportation section, the rest of the sections are basically this:

• Get around: The airport is small, and you can even walk between the domestic and international terminals in a few minutes if you wanted.
• Wait: There isn't a great deal to do in either the airport or the surrounding area.
• Eat: There is a large Starbucks coffee on the land-side, along with a decent Korean restaurant and Popeye's on the ground floor.
• Buy: There is a large duty free shopping area air-side, and standard convenience stores as well.
• Cope: The airport is very safe, and small enough that you will not get lost.
• Sleep: There are no hotel options close to the airport, apart from some motels.

Do we really want airport articles like this? Because I imagine there are hundreds of airports like this one. Texugo (talk) 22:18, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I do think Houston's airport qualifies. Texugo (talk) 22:19, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I can't find many statistics about Gimhae, but from a weekly total I found, it looks like the average is 254 flights per day: within our boundary, though the majority are domestic. Personally, I don't have a particular problem with lots of articles of that nature as long as they are informative, faithful and full. When I created Manchester Airport (a large, bewildering airport, but not a Heathrow), I tried my best to see what could be made with a smaller airport article. I don't know what people think of that article, but I wouldn't be averse to more articles about slightly smaller airports (Manchester, Stansted etc) as long as they're of use to the traveller and aren't left as stubs. However, I do recognise that it would probably be better, for the moment at least, to concentrate our efforts on larger hub airports. Perhaps this would be an occasion to deal with articles centrally (ie only create articles that are on the Future targets list or ask for permission)? --Nick ^talk 22:48, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I didn't exactly expound on my opinion above, but in Ginhae's case, I think the airport could be (and was) covered perfectly well in the Busan article and do not see any reason to separate the info from there. Texugo (talk) 22:53, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

As for Gimhae, that's probably fair. I think an important criterion in all of this is whether the amount of information about the airport would (or does) overwhelm the host article. If not, there's probably little reason to separate the two. --Nick ^talk 22:56, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

As things stand, the sections of the Gimhae guide after "Ground transportation" are all boring and unimportant. If there is no more information to put in those sections, I'm not sure that means there shouldn't be a Gimhae guide, but if we keep one, perhaps several sections could be mashed up. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:57, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

What strikes me as borderline about Gimhae is that the guide through the end of "Ground transportation" is already pretty long to be a section of the destination article about Busan - though maybe not too long, since it's the only(? or at least only major) airport for Busan. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:00, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, if there is going to be more content then it might well be worth preserving it as it is. --Nick ^talk 23:06, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

To be honest, that giant table of bus stops is the only thing making this a little bit long, and traditionally we always avoid attempting to provide giant lists and tables of bus schedules. If you take that out and give a sensible summary instead, I don't think anyone can say it's too long for the Busan article.

If it were legitimately a bit longer, we might have two conflicting ways of thinking about it though:

• "if the airport does not have enough amenities to fill out a "Buy" and "Eat and Drink" section then it does not merit its own article"
• "if the information is too long to fit in the city article it should get its own article"

I don't personally much like the idea of enabling us to combine any permanently empty section just so we can get away with making a page to put the flight and transport info. Texugo (talk) 23:26, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I understand that and I'm inclined to at least generally agree. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:10, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

As with many wikivoyage articles, Gimhae Airport is a work in progress. I will add more content. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:47, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

For reference, tomorrow Gimhae will have 79 domestic flights, and 68 international flights. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:59, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

How many are connecting flights? LtPowers (talk) 02:32, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

If we set the requirement at over 100 flights a day, that covers most mid-size airports. I see a problem with that. —The preceding comment was added by 68.50.233.28 (talk • contribs)

Do you have a proposal for a different standard, or do you think we should just continue to try to reach a consensus on each airport? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:25, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

100 is the bare minimum; it's a necessary but not a sufficient criterion for an airport to get an article. LtPowers (talk) 02:32, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me, though it might be too small a minimum number; I don't know. Is there a ready reference for the number of flights to and from each airport? Incidentally, as a post-script to our discussion about Stansted Airport, I don't see a number of flights per day on their site, but they do say they're the "fourth-busiest in the UK". [4] Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:12, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

The 100 flights requirement...just for clarification...needs to be written as "100 scheduled, commercial flights per day". That's almost certainly what everyone's been thinking when discussing this, but a lot of smaller U.S. airports are used for a small number of scheduled, commercial flights and a lot of general aviation flights (private planes, private commercial flights) and maybe even some military flights. This could create some confusion in the future, if someone looked at Wikipedia and saw that an airport has "578 aircraft operations per day" they may make an article for the airport, which only handles 40-50 scheduled, commercial flights a day. Take this example for w:Sarasota–Bradenton International Airport:

For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2009, the airport had 106,710 aircraft operations, an average of 292 per day: 78% general aviation, 13% scheduled commercial, 7% air taxi, and 2% military.

Do the math and that's an average of 38 scheduled commercial "aircraft operations" (landings and takeoffs) or 19 scheduled, commercial flights per day. I just thought this should be clarified when discussing "flights". AHeneen (talk) 23:52, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Does 'scheduled commercial' include charter flights? I ask because I do not see a percentage for 'unscheduled commercial'. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:34, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I believe most charter flights would fall under the category "air taxi" or "general aviation". I don't believe this airport handles large charter flights (like 767's or A330s). "Air taxi" covers flights on fixed routes, which are booked/flown on demand. "General aviation" covers small private/business jets and sightseeing flights. I doubt there are many airports where unscheduled commercial flights (eg. charter flight) make a significant difference for our purposes. AHeneen (talk) 01:20, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

In Europe, Charter flights can constitute a significant portion of flights from secondary airports. (i.e. Gatwick and Standstead, London). This may be less the case in North America. In any case, should they be counted or not? (I believe they shouldn't) --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:43, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that they shouldn't be counted for the purposes of deciding whether an airport merits an article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:47, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

BSB International Airport

I just tagged this with a merge tag. Does anyone think this is the type of airport there should be articles about on this site? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:13, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

No - WP says it's still under construction and, as such, I'm not sure it yet fits our remit. Also, it's due to serve a provincial capital with a population of 700,000, so I wouldn't anticipate it being hugely busy, but I could be wrong. --Nick ^talk 20:34, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I've merged it. But the airport will not serve only Samarinda. It will serve 70 percent of East Kalimantan population, because many airports in East Kalimantan, does not have the requirement of national flight. And, the population of Samarinda has reached 1 million in 2012 (700k in 2010).--Mazta2012 (talk) 02:50, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

We can revisit this when the airport is open, but I seriously doubt any airport on the entire island of Borneo will be sufficiently complex and important to merit its own dedicated article, based on the criteria discussed higher on this page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

First star airport?

O'Hare International Airport may have been my only failed star nomination that I haven't since rescued. The criticisms back then do not apply to the article as it now stands (following newer policies), since it covers only the airport, and not the airport hotels in the surrounding towns (which have now been moved to the separate town articles). Would expedition members be able to provide some guidance as to what more needs to be done before re-nominating the article for star status? --Peter ^Talk 06:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone have any thoughts on Peter's query? That article looks complete to me, but I might be missing something. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:32, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't come up with any criticisms. As Peter pointed out, the thing that sank the first nomination isn't an issue now, and the new pictures have done a great job livening up the page. I already see it as a model for airport articles and think this is worthy of a star. PerryPlanet (talk) 18:25, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I have now nominated it, and would appreciate comments there ;) --Peter ^Talk 20:20, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the slow reply - still reliant on my phone! Wikivoyage:Airport guide status is very vague about this, so we could do with tightening it up. Like everyone else, I think the O'Hare article is excellent and a worthy candidate to become a star. --Nick ^talk 20:30, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport

Is there a strong justification for an article on this airport? The article is currently a stub. I haven't flown into that airport since the 80s, but I doubt there's a reason for a dedicated article on the airport. Someone, please convince me. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:30, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

There's very little about the airport in Sarasota#By plane that could be moved to the article, a glance at Wikipedia [5] tells me that it's not a very big airport with less than a million passengers per year (wasn't the idea of the airport articles to provide information about large and important hubs?). Plus, I think I do have quite good knowledge of America's geography but I've never heard about that airport before. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think a separate article is justified here and the content on the page isn't particularly lengthy. I think it should be merged and the link redirected. --Nick ^talk 20:32, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I merged the information to Sarasota and Bradenton and turned the article into a redirect to Sarasota#By air - imperfect, but acceptable in my opinion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:36, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I created the page when making redirect pages for airports in Florida which served commercial flights. The problem with this airport is that it serves two equally-sized communities (Bradenton/Manatee County and Sarasota/Sarasota County), it lies roughly half-way between those two cities, and it is even located on the border between the counties (terminal in Sarasota County, while most of runway/tarmac is in Manatee County). It didn't seem right to simply redirect to Sarasota...had you looked closely, it wasn't a stub but a disambiguation page (since a double redirect isn't possible!). Also, I had inserted a no-display message (the syntax starting with < !) that reads:

"STOP! DO NOT EXPAND THE CONTENT OF THIS PAGE!! The airport does not meet the qualifications to have its own article,and should remain a disambiguation page.

Ideally, this page should be a redirect, but the airport has both cities in its name, is located close to and almost equidistant from both cities, and both cities are roughly the same size (55,000 people) making it difficult to pick which city to redirect to. It even straddles the county line between Sarasota & Manatee Counties, with most of the runways/tarmac in Manatee and the terminal in Sarasota County. If this page absolutely must be turned into a redirect, then "Southwest Florida" would be most appropriate followed by "Sarasota", if only because it a more-recognized name and comes first in the airports name (and thus, is listed on some tickets as just 'Sarasota')."

I don't see any harm in reverting to its original version as a disambiguation page with the above notice. AHeneen (talk) 09:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I concur.

A judgement of Solomon.

(This is probably the best and most carefully thought-out use of a no-display message I've ever seen. My compliments, AHeneen!) --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 10:49, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

It would be better to redirect to Southwest Florida#By air. Globe-trotter (talk) 11:12, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Why? --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 11:44, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Because that's current practice? The airport does not deserve its own article, so it should be redirected to the article where it is covered. Why add addresses and phone numbers to a disambiguation page? Globe-trotter (talk) 12:01, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I think you're rather missing the point here, G-T. There is no single page (currently) where the article could be adequately re-directed to. Because of that fact, if we keep it as a disambiguation page, we should put the travellers' needs first and give the sparse information that we have right on that page so they don't have to make a secondary click. If we decide to re-direct then the point is moot. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 12:55, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

There is a page it could be redirected to, Southwest Florida#By air. Giving detailed information on a disambiguation page defeats its purpose. Globe-trotter (talk) 13:04, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Currently it's actually Southwest_Florida By plane but that doesn't subtract from your substantive point which would normally be perfectly valid. However, I don't think the current information about location, phone number, etc is too detailed. In the proximate case I prefer AHeneen's original solution but he'd probably agree that it's no big deal either way. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 13:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I don’t have a strong opinion but I would also find it more natural to redirect to Southwest Florida#By plane. The expression "Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport" is all but ambiguous, it’s a perfectly definite place which does not to deserve an article, but it’s not "ambiguous". Fractal (talk) 15:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd also say: redirect to Southwest Florida, then put the listing into both Sarasota and Bradenton. ϒpsilon (talk) 15:37, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

First, I did see that the article called itself a disambiguation page, but as others have mentioned, a disambiguation page that constitutes a listing doesn't really function as a disambiguation page. There are already listings for the airport in Sarasota and Bradenton (and also Tampa). If it's really a problem to redirect to Sarasota#By plane, for the reasons stated above, I support redirecting to Southwest Florida#By plane. The fact that an airport serves two cities and is on the border between two counties (though closer to downtown Sarasota than downtown Bradenton) is not, to me, a strong rationale for a disambiguation page. Disambiguation pages, to my understanding, are used when there is more than one place with the same name, not when a single place is on the border between two counties. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:07, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

This topic also seems to have become the victim of inertia and loss of initiative. I haven't changed my views, and it looked like we had a majority in favor of redirecting to Southwest Florida, but this discussion might benefit from some other people's views. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Airport comparisons?

I think it would be handy to have a table somewhere indicating which airports have which convenience features for travellers.

• free WiFi everywhere, like Schipol, versus only in some places like Hong Kong versus a charge for service
• subway stop like LHR or either Shanghai airport versus less convenient transport
• free transport or easy walk between terminals (Gatwick & most others) versus places like Dallas where there is a charge, seriously inconvenient if you have no local cash yet
• transit without going through customs, which most (all?) US stops disallow. They even made me get off and go through customs for a refueling stop in Anchorage on a Toronto to Hong Kong flight

Such a list might be quite helpful in trip planning. Pashley (talk) 17:55, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not sure I see the advantage of such a table. It's useful info to put on each airport page, for sure, but I doubt people decide where to fly to based on whether the airport has a subway stop or free WiFi. Those kinds of comparisons only come in handy when you're deciding between airports in a single large city, but not when choosing to fly to either Dallas or London. PerryPlanet (talk) 20:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I was going to say the same thing. I don't think such a table would end up being anything more than a curiosity, since I can't imagine anyone actually making travel decisions based on that. All that info should be in the respective airport or destination article, but I don't see what planning advantage would be gained from comparing airports in different parts of the world. Texugo (talk) 00:19, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you maybe thinking in terms of a infobox for an airport? Has Wi-Fi, need local cash for transfers, on city metro, etc could be shortcut info nicely accessible from a summary box? --Inas (talk) 03:59, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I had not thought of that, but it is a good idea. Pashley (talk) 06:21, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

When flying from London to Auckland, I had the choice of going via Singapore Changi Airport, Hong Kong International Airport or Los Angeles International Airport. I don't think that it is too much to spend a couple of minutes looking at each airport article, but it is important that key facts like visa requirements and transit facilities can easily be found from the airport article (maybe as links to the section of the country article). AlasdairW (talk) 21:01, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that an "Infobox" containing the key facts would be useful for travellers. --W. Frank^email_talk 20:16, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

"Airports of X"

I had a look at the city articles for the airports that have qualified as Future targets. In all cases they contain relatively little information about the airport and all cities have two or even three airports (Sao Paulo). How about making articles named "Airports of X" and include information about all airports, for instance "Airports of Rome" where information concerning both Leonardo da Vinci and Ciampino would be included? And btw... Houston doesn't really need a separate airport article, at least for now... ϒpsilon (talk) 19:57, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Good idea in principle but I'm wondering how it would turn out in practice. LON would be the obvious test case... --W. Frank^email_talk 20:16, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

It would be useful in Asia where many capital cities have significant secondary airports that do not merit their own articles. That said, I also think in practice that it would be difficult, since you have avoid confusing the details relating to each airport in the same article. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:49, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

We haven't done it so far, and I think it's probably good that we have separate articles for JFK Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport , and for Heathrow, Gatwick, and Stansted. If we combined those sets of airports, the articles would be overly long, and please let's consider that they'd combine information some readers wouldn't need. If you know you're traveling to and from Newark Airport, why would you want to wade through reams of JFK info? I'm not so inflexible that I'll say there may never be a call for the kind of article proposed by Ypsilon, but my question would be, what would be the criteria for a consolidated article, as opposed to coverage in the relevant destination article on the one hand or separate airport articles as needed, on the other? I would suggest that unless pretty clear guidelines can be established, we should maintain the status quo. However, we should all be willing to consider any new clear guidelines, as flexibility is what allowed the Airport Expedition to go ahead in the first place. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:20, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Another issue is that there is a common scenario of the secondary airport having been built 40 years ago near the city center, and the primary airport has been built in the last 10 years far out in the distant suburbs. This means you are describing two very different facilities with very different transport connections. I think the current Wikivoyage approach of describing the options at a high level on the city page is sufficient, with links to relevant airport articles underneath. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:52, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Right. An "Airports of London" article would be silly. The overview airport info belongs in the city article. Among other things, that gives us a place to discuss local oddities; e.g. for Shanghai, there are three worth mentioning. For many Chinese destinations the High-speed rail in China network provides a better choice than flying, for trips to Hong Kong it is often cheaper to fly to Shenzhen then cross the border, and for Southeast Asia there are few cheap flights from Shanghai but more from nearby Hangzhou. Pashley (talk) 11:35, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

No no no no no, I do NOT want to see any of the already existing airport articles to be mashed together into one single article per city. In the cases of London and NY that would definitely ruin the purpose of the Airport Expedition. I was talking about places like Rome, São Paulo and Moscow that don't have any airport articles yet and where the city articles contain about equally much information about two or more airports. ϒpsilon (talk) 14:07, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I like this idea. For example, I don't think São Paulo airports would be very conducive to this approach - the domestic airport is about 13 km south of downtown while the international one is about 22 km northeast of downtown in another city, and the two share practically nothing in terms of getting in/around, parking, airlines, flights, services, eats, nearby lodging, etc. There would be no logical way to organize an article about the two other than a) giving each main section a subsection for each airport, thus alternating between talking about one airport and the other all the way down the page, or b) essentially stacking the two articles on top of each other on the same page. I see no advantage to combining them. Texugo (talk) 15:18, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Let's forget about the whole idea then... ϒpsilon (talk) 18:47, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Need a table?

Over at Wikivoyage:World cities/Large I created a table, originally from WP data, of major world cities and various people helped fill it in. Now it is, I think, a decent summary of where we are in terms of covering the most important cities. A key feature is that it is sortable on any column so you can look at the data in various ways.

Should we add a column there for whether there are airport articles associated with each city?

Should we have a separate table, starting from data at w:List of airports, for the important airports? It seems to me this might help the expedition see where it is and what should be next. However, I am not volunteering for this work. Pashley (talk) 19:25, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Pashley, I would like to see a column added to that World largest cities table whether we have an article on the airport serving each city. --Saqib (talk) 19:33, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Links from WP?

Google search for "Pudong Airport" does not turn this article up in the first two pages. No doubt it is there somewhere, but not where people are most likely to see it. I am not certain if this should be raised here, at Wikivoyage:Search Expedition, or both. I'll start here.

As is quite common, Wikipedia ranks #1 on Google search. Checking their article w:Shanghai Pudong International Airport, I don't see a link to our article. Can someone please fix that and check for similar problems with other airport articles? Pashley (talk) 15:28, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

A related issue: checking Zhuhai#Get_in I find the text "To reach Zhuhai from outside China, one would usually fly to Hong Kong, Macau or Guangzhou." with all three links pointing to city articles, not to the airport articles. Since we have Hong Kong International Airport, presumably that link should go there. I'm not sure about the others. Since internal links affect search rankings, this looks worth doing.

Of course, it isn't just Zhuhai; there are likely half a dozen cities in the region for which HK airport is one of the main transport options and the region article Pearl River Delta or province article Guangdong might link to it as well. Quite likely something similar applies for other major airports. I tried "what links here" only for Pudong Airport, which looks OK, and for HK, which doesn't.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA)

I am making a proposal on the Kuala Lumpa Talk Page to create a separate article for KLIA. Please join if you have an opinion for or against. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 11:07, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Redirects

I think it'd be very handy to have a redirect from the IATA code for each airport that has it's own article (for some airports such a redirect already exists, e.g. LAX brings you to the Los Angeles International Airport article). Any objections? ϒpsilon (talk) 19:22, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Go for it - such redirects will be valuable from both a usability and a SEO perspective. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:37, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Great! And I see Saqib already started with Dubai! ϒpsilon (talk) 19:42, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

And all done! --Saqib (talk) 19:58, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Hooray! (I reverted a vandal as you can see in the Recent changes so I hadn't time to do so many) :) ϒpsilon (talk) 20:02, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Good idea. Pashley (talk) 22:05, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

+1 Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Hongqiao airport, Shanghai, China

We already have an airport article for Shanghai's biggest airport, Pudong International Airport. I have always resisted creating another article for w:Shanghai_Hongqiao_International_Airport on the basis that 2nd airports do not seem to get their own articles.

However I have been using the airport a great deal over the past few weeks, and it is actually pretty impressive for a 'second airport'. It is China's 4th busiest airport with over 33 million passengers a year, with international and domestic flights. Additionally it is directly connected to the massive Hongqiao train station, making it an extreemly important transport hub.

Would it be appropriate to create a second airport article for Shanghai? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:32, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Hongqiao is a major airport in some ways, but I think all the international flights are to nearby Asian countries. WP gives several lists for "busiest airports by ..."; at w:World's_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic#2013_statistics Hongqiao ranks 36th, just below Toronto Pearson which has no article, but above Gatwick Airport and Tokyo Narita Airport which both have articles.

I'd say if someone wants to do the work, by all means plunge forward. If not, lacking an article for this is not a disaster. Pashley (talk) 03:31, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

And STN and EWR also have their own articles.

Right now there isn't overwhelmingly much information in Shanghai#Hongqiao Airport, so that wouldn't justify a new article. But if you have more stuff to add, then go ahead. ϒpsilon (talk) 04:35, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

I felt that I didn't want to add more information to Shanghai#Hongqiao Airport because it is long enough already.

Maybe I can create the article in my user space and see how it goes. Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's probably the best solution. ϒpsilon (talk) 07:25, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Guangzhou airport

I didn't realize that w:Guangzhou_Baiyun_International_Airport was actually the 13th busiest in the world. Since I have been using it a lot recently I will start an article. Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:35, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Status criteria for airports?

We have defined criteria for when a city, national park, itinerary etc. becomes usable, guide and star. But we don't seem to have such a system for airport articles (or I cannot find it).

There is of course Wikivoyage:Travel topic status that could be used because airports articles are regarded as travel topics. But unlike other travel topics airport articles also have a pre-defined template, just like for example cities, itineraries or phrasebooks so therefore it would be logical to have a separate grading system as well.

Inspired by Wikivoyage:City guide status, I would suggest that an airport article would become "usable" when there is information about (1) ground transportation, (2) getting around, (3) a place to Eat/Drink, (4) a store to Buy and (5) information about the airport's Wi-Fi network, computers or its absence in Connect. That's pretty much what an average airport user would need to know. The guide and star criteria could for the most part be copied from Wikivoyage:City guide status - after all major airports are like small cities or towns. ϒpsilon (talk) 09:42, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable starting point. Suggest creating a page like the city guide status which can then be reviewed and edited. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:57, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Looks like there is one after all, I found it when trying to start it. It would've been very useful to have a link to it from Wikivoyage:Airport Expedition. ϒpsilon (talk) 15:07, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Hahn

On the page about Hahn (which links to the German WV page about the airport not the hamlet) there is almost no information that is of any use to travellers wishing to spend time in the city, however it serves as an airport article, as everything that would usually be in an airport article is contained within that article's get in section. Maybe we should create a "mid-sized airport" category, or else redefine or re-evaluate the "huge" criterion. I think the huge airport idea was conceived way back when in a time when WV had to concentrate resources on the most important things (a travel guide can live without an article on Düsseldorf airport; it can't live without an article on San Francisco or one that doesn't mention the Golden Gate Bridge). However, I also think that the policy partly originated from a US-focus; in the United States most airports aren't connected to any form of public transportation except maybe an "alibi" bus. In the US there are more airports than major cities. In Europe there are towns of 100 000 and more inhabitants that don't even have a general aviation airport. In Europe connection to the subway/urban rail / long distance railway network is the norm rather than the exception. Now... if TTCF than I would think we should have information for the traveller on how to get to at least those airports that a traveller might conceivably use by non-trivial means. (e.g. no information on how you hail a taxi in downtown x to go to the x "international" airport with one flight a week to the neighboring country fifty kilometers away). And we should (maybe) also provide information on "Ryanair-airports" that are often named something along the lines of "Düsseldorf-Weeze" and are not at all close to said city. I think we should put information about those airports somewhere. Now as to where... We could create "city" articles along the lines of Hahn and thus technically not violate current policy, we could mention them as an alternative mode of "getting in" in the article of the city they are supposedly close to (however in the case of Hahn there is also a direct bus to Strasbourg, so should we mention Hahn in that article as well? And discuss the evils of Ryanair there at length as well?).

I fear what was once justified and supposed to be a feature; avoiding useless half-empty articles on any paved dirt runway in Polar Canada has now become a bug: Travellers search for information on an airport and perceive WV to be lacking, because they aren't able to draw the line between Frankfurt airport being notable and (I don't even know which one has an article) Tegel or Düsseldorf, Hahn or Weeze Charles de Gaulles or Schiphol not being that. By the way... The German wikivoyage has articles on almost all German airports. Bug or feature? you decide. Best wishesHobbitschuster (talk) 00:21, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I think there is much to be said for having a 'mini airport' class such as for Hahn, where the airport itself overwhelms the local settlement completely. Also I believe that we should write more about 'relevant' airports, and not just those with huge passenger numbers.

Of course, what makes an airport 'relevant'? I would say many 'get in' sections have airport information bursting at the seams, for example Bangalore#By_plane --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:26, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Because of Ryanair, Hahn Airport (laughingly called Frankfurt (Hahn)) is of importance in Germany and definitely warrants it's own article. --222.127.76.207 02:00, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

So what about Leipzig-Halle airport (IATA code: LEJ) than? it is close to a settlement that is totally overwhelmed in importance by it (Schkeuditz), and it serves more than one city (there are direct trains to/from Halle and Leipzig main station, both cities that are visited by many travellers every year); However unless you have a skewed vie of "somewhere" it isn't really in the middle of nowhere and it is not dominantly or exclusively used by low service airlines such as Ryanair. (it is one of Europe most important freight hubs, but that is of no importance to 99.9999% of travellers) Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:44, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

The one instance where a traveller might want to know about an airport, but not the city itself, would be where that facility is the primary transfer point between flights for one or more airlines. London, Toronto, Atlanta likely fill the bill, Nain (Labrador) likely not. Travellers often pass through these points with no intention of visiting the corresponding host city. That said, don't be knocking "any paved dirt runway in Polar Canada" as those might be the only year-round way into those towns (the Trans-Canada Highway and Windsor-Quebec corridor beaten paths are in the south) and therefore a tightly-integred part of the "city" level article without which the destination is not usable. K7L (talk) 16:29, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I would agree with your statement if you removed "between flights for one or more airlines". Hahn Airport is a good example of a facility that is rarely used to transfer to another flight but is still of great interest to travellers who wish to know what facilities are available and what onward public transport consists of. --222.127.76.207 01:57, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I was mentioning paved dirt runways in polar Canada as a stand in for minor airports that are best handled in the "get in" sections (where they belong) and not in individual articles. However, there are some airports (mostly former military airbases converted to civilian use or airports that used to serve other purposes such as "Barcelona"-Girona) that are more important than the adjacent settlement, yet wouldn't qualify as huge. They are however used as "interchanging points" but not between airlines (you could technically do that, but Ryanair for example doesn't guarantee connections and strongly discourages connecting flights with their price and route policy) but rather between other modes of transport and air traffic. Now, that is true for almost all airports, but unlike "normal" airports (I still don't understand why neither of the Berlin airports has an article but Frankfurt does...) in the case of Hahn, Girona, Weeze and the likes the getting to the airport part involves a "journey" all by itself that is often by no means self explanatory and thus - rather than creating huge unreadable get in sections - should imho be handled in a separate article until the glorious day that Ryanair either files for bankruptcy or ceases flying to neck of the woods airports in Nowhere, Hessen or molehill, Saxony-Anhalt Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:53, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

When starting the Airport Expedition, some people were afraid we would sooner or later flooded with stub articles of small airports. de:Kategorie:Flughäfen is indeed a horror example what it looks like when the qualification for an airport to get its own article seems to be whether there are any passenger flights there at all (dodgy domestic airports in Egypt? Heringsdorf and Metz!? WTH?). I'm not very keen on making separate articles for airports in the cases we can do without — actually we already have a few airport articles that I'm not really sure we need. Developing a separate template for mid-sized airport may be a step towards a similar situation as in de.

As reflected in their names, budget airline airports are in general "serving" one or two large cities in particular, despite the airports being located sometimes even 100km away. In that case, the information should be contained in the Get in section of those cities. In my experience, much less gets written about the small faraway airport(s) than about the main airport. "Frankfurt"-Hahn is a somewhat different case as Frankfurt doesn't, unlike Paris, have over 100 times the population of any other city served by the airport. How about developing the article along the lines of Gardermoen, ie. as a city/town article with the airport? ϒpsilon (talk) 18:44, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Gardermoen has very little about the town, it is in many cases like the Hahn article. I see one museum but no places to eat outside of the airport. A joint town airport article would be like Castle Donington. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I fear if we don't change the situation as it stands now we will have to deal with a lot of article on "cities" that don't merit their own article (there is none on Forchheim in this WV for example, although the German WV has one) because they are the next human settlement in the vicinity of an airport that was deemed to small to receive an article. There might even some day be "district" articles in huge cities about the airport, as a city district because the airport was deemed to small for an article. I mean: other than having articles with little content, what is the potential harm of allowing articles on airports like Hahn or Weeze? thus we don't have gigantic "get in" sections in every city article in a 200 kilometer radius, but can just put in a link to said airport and write something along the lines of: "Metropolis middle of nowhere airport is not actually close to Metropolis, but rather in the hamlet of the name middle of nowhere some 100 km east. As there is currently no rail connection (the former railway line was deactivated in 1947 after World War II damages made rebuilding the seldom used spur line too costly, you will have to get on a bus (2 hours, 12,50€) or take your own car (exit the highway at molehill and drive twenty more kilometers along the one lane paved dirt road). Taking a taxi would set you back about 2000€ and not all drivers will go there due to fear of their taxi running out of gas in the seldom visited middle of nowhere mountains" (okay I maybe got a tad snarky there). Bottom line is this: If we don't do anything we will have to either delete or grudgingly accept articles on unimportant hamlets of no touristic value just because they happen to be attached to a deceptively named airport... Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:12, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

If a destination doesn't have any sights or attractions (no See or Do listings), then it probably shouldn't have an article here, regardless of how big its airport is. Information on the airport can go in the next biggest community or in the region article. Powers ^(talk) 00:36, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

That is kind of the point: We shouldn't have articles on hamlets like Hahn or Weeze, because their "attractions" or "restaurants" don't merit having one. However we will always have a need to put the information about the airport somewhere. And as these airports are precisely In the middle of nowhere, Rheinland Pfalz there is no "closest city" where we can put the airport information. At least none that would justify having an article. So we are back to square one with article on barely populated bland locality, Tuscany being written because that piece of earths land surface has a former military airport that some mayor or governor had the genius idea of converting to an airport. Now if we as WV want to be a serious travel guide, we can't pretend those airports don't exist. They are used by a lot of travellers every year and they fool even more travellers by being misleadingly named after actual cities, that we have (and should have) articles on, that are one hundred and more kilometers from those airports. If we put them in the "get in" section of the "next" city (kind of a stretch for an airport that is more than 100 kilometers from any notable human settlement) we have to ask ourselves a) is the get in section getting to big? and b) which one is the "next" city? I think (and have expressed this opinion on the German WV) that having information about the dominant airports of a country in most articles about that country (e.g. Frankfurt for almost all articles on Germany; Munich Hamburg and Berlin for those not close to Frankfurt) and how to go from there to your final destination is very valuable to travellers. But I think it is not of any use for a traveller who might want to print the get in section out to have to read a fifty line description of the road from back of beyond international airport to the place it has been deceptively named after by Ryanair. If we on the other hand have an article on those airports (we can if we want impose a "keep it brief" policy on them) we can just link to them and travellers that want to use that airport can make an informed choice and print out the guide for Hahn Weeze or Girona without ever having to skim over some World War I monument that we jazzed up to an attraction to justify having an article on the "city" rather than the airport. I think it is crucial to not have too big "get in" sections as this is one of the first things a traveller will probably read. If for example you read somewhere, that Managua is really nice (it isn't) and getting back some of its old charm (it does) you might say: Hey; what does Wikivoyage have to say about Managua? What I would like to read than is in a short concise way how I get in and what are some things that I would do there (check out the view down Loma de Tiscapa for example, it is really nice). What I don't want is to read half a page about some airport (which in the case of Managua gladly isn't the case, the airport is actually less than 20 km from downtown Managua however one cares to define that) some 100 km away that calls itself Managua-Juigalpa airport (such an airport doesn't exist; but for the sake of argument) and is flown to mostly by low service airlines. If we than proceed to have an article on the town the airport is in (Juigalpa is actually not that small and quite lovely at least what I could see from the window of a bus passing through) that tells me nothing but what the airport is about I will come back from my experience with Wikivoyage and say: What kind of bullshit is this? They have an article on a town that says nothing about anything but the airport and they don't have an article about the airport. Heck they don't even have an airport on Berlin-Tegel (an airport that has actually been lauded for its unconvetional "efficient" design several times) Plus they have a pretentious French sounding name and (if I weren't "sold" on WV already, which I am otherwise I wouldn't de writing this) go on buying lonely planet or other dead trees travel guides.. Anyways I fear I am rambling and will cease writing for now, unless I find a truly new argument or one is presented. I still don't see the danger in replacing articles on hamlets with articles on the airport that put the hamlet on the map, though. Best wishesHobbitschuster (talk) 01:20, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Hobbitschuster's approach is correct for all the reasons he has so eloquently explained. I'm not so very sure a separate small airport template is needed for Hahn though, can't it just use the existing airport template? --222.127.76.207 02:03, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Gardermoen and Hahn are basically airport articles but are using city template as they do not meet the current criteria for an airport. I think there are good arguments above to make these airport articles. Suggest extending the definition of Article criteria with something along the lines of:

• A major airport for getting into or out of a country and serves as a route to key destinations.

This would cover Hahn as it is a key route to western German from other parts of Europe, not jsut Frankfurt but also the Middle Rhine Valley, the Mosel and Luxembourg. In many ways they are basically like London Stansted Airport, which although has a higher traffic volume, is also near a small town and a good hour away from London (in fact if you add time to get through passport control Hahn is closer to Frankfurt than Stanstead is to London). I agree we need to keep an eye on things and make sure we do not get a mass of pages with little information on them, but even here we tolerate a mass a empty outline city articles and recently a lot of park articles that are basically one liners. Any other suggestion on the article criteria extension? --Traveler100 (talk) 08:06, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't know Hahn and don't take a view about whether this should be an airport article or not, but I would only caution that the fact that we have a lot of stubs and empty Outline articles that just say "X is in Y" is not a good argument for allowing empty airport articles, and I would strongly oppose tolerating any of those. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:43, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree, we need to word the criteria so that only if there is useful and specific get in and sleep should an article exist, as when not it can simply be a couple of lines in the get in sections of the cities and regions that are fed by the airport. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:49, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

We do not need to expand our criteria for airport articles just because some people are writing them with the name of the locality attached. Such articles do not meet our criteria regardless of how they're titled. Powers ^(talk) 15:12, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I do not think people are saying expand the criteria just because people are writing article about airports in cities. What is being said is we should consider expanding the criteria because it appears to be the sensible think to do. This project is still relatively young, the rules are not written in stone. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand why it's sensible. Very large airports are confusing and complex. Mid-sized airports are not and don't need their own articles. Powers ^(talk) 20:24, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Did you understand and note the points made earlier about public transport links to European airports and the difference with the US situation? --222.127.76.207 05:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think this issue has been a bit overlooked in the discussion. Parking in Europe tends to be expensive, as is gas (compared to the US at least) so people tend to arrive at the airport by public transit, because taxis are often also expensive or not an option (*cough Hahn cough*). Therefore one obvious thing to put into an airport article is: Is there a rail link? if not is there any other form of rapid transit connection to the next city? If not are there buses? Where do they leave? How do I book them? Of course some of those things are found on the website of the airport, but than again some of the things in WV as a whole are found on hotel websites, lonely planet...Hobbitschuster (talk) 10:27, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Many towns are not confusing and complex but it good to know how to get there and where you can sleep. London Stansted Airport does not meet the current criteria, too me it should however have an article on a travel site. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:33, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

It would help me if someone could create an example. I'm having trouble envisioning what a tiny airport article would actually contain beyond "Get in" and "Get around" info, what it is that needs to be moved out of the city articles, and why that should be moved out. Seeing an example of those two things would greatly assist me in understanding the need for these new articles. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

To the point about whether London Stansted Airport fulfills the current criteria, note the following from the article:

It [Stansted Airport] is the fourth busiest airport in the United Kingdom in terms of passenger numbers, with 17 million passing through its gates in 2012.

So maybe a borderline case in some ways, but geez, the 4th-busiest airport in the UK is hardly tiny. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:49, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Just curious, how exactly does London Standsted not meet the criteria? Does it not have enough connecting flights? (Perhaps similar to the Hahn airport in question?)

I'm actually not agreeing that an airport article's usefulness to the traveler can only be measured in statistics around passenger numbers and flights. Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:20, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Although Stansted sees more travellers than some airports we do have articles about, it's overwhelmingly utilised by low service carriers that stress they are point-to-point carriers without interline facilities. If we're not allowed to create an article useful to travellers about Stansted, then the "roolz" need to be quickly changed. --222.127.76.207 05:51, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Stansted was discussed above in previous threads, so you all might want to review that discussion. The upshot was that most of us didn't consider an article about that airport a high priority, but once someone decided to create one, we were fine with it. However, we weren't OK with articles about Luton and London City Airports. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:07, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

The discussions relevant to Stansted were (or at least included) Wikivoyage talk:Airport Expedition#Secondary Airports and (though only, I believe, in the first post) Wikivoyage talk:Airport Expedition#London City and Luton Airports. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:46, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Excuse me for maybe asking a dumb question, but... What is the conclusion? Will there be a change in rules? Will the Hahn article be kept in its current form? What about other "Ryanair" airports? Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:25, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

As is often the case with Wikivoyage discussions, there doesn't seem to be any conclusion, with the result that nothing gets done. My feeling is that the traveller comes first trumps almost any other principle, but if we do decide to have articles about airports like Hahn, we need to establish some kind of coherent principles for when articles about smaller airports are a good idea and when they aren't. Perhaps you could move the discussion along by suggesting some specific criteria for when an article about a smaller airport is appropriate and when it isn't. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:29, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

So this would be my draft proposal (not all of these have to be met everytime imho): If the airport

1. sees significant travel even and especially if by low service airlines
2. is misleadingly named (e.g. in advertising from a low service airline)
3. serves more than one city or isn't really "close" to any one city
4. serves as a point to get into or out of a country or macro-region
5. vastly overshadows the village it is attached to, but someone already made an article on said village that mostly describes the airport

This is just an off the cuff first draft. Feel free to improve upon that or disagree entirely. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:39, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

That looks like a good working list. While we get responses to this, I think the next step is to specify some examples. Gardermoen has been mentioned. Any others? And a list of counter-examples that wouldn't get their own article under this proposal would also be useful, and maybe crucial in overcoming opposition to this expansion of the Airport Expedition. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest putting some numbers to "significant travel" - maybe 250,000 passengers per year, and 5000 departures per year. (In addition to meeting most of the other points). The numbers would exclude Stornoway with 125,582 passengers. AlasdairW (talk) 00:02, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Maybe part of the stipulation should be that the airport, though perhaps far-flung, serves at least one major destination. We wouldn't want to have articles about airstrips in Alaska, either.

It looks like Hahn Airport had 2,667,529 passengers in 2013, though the number had steadily declined from a peak of over 4 million in 2007. These figures lead me to believe that 250,000 passengers/year might be too low a figure. You brought up a counter-example; which examples are you thinking of? We could try to check yearly passenger traffic at those, too. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

An aside, but w:Frankfurt–Hahn Airport has some pretty interesting information, including the following:

The addition of Frankfurt to its name, however, is not an invention of low-cost carriers as is the case with some other airports – Frankfurt-Hahn is the airport's official name as it positioned itself as an alternative to Frankfurt Airport for low-cost and cargo traffic.

In January 2014 it has been announced that the airport has accumulated debts of € 125 million while passenger and cargo traffic are decreasing. Due to these figures a closure of the airport within the next ten years is not excluded. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:14, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Airports that should imho be included in this definition are ones like Hahn or Weeze (I don't know anything about Gardemoen, so I leave that up to you). Airports that shouldn't have an article are ones like Magdeburg, Erfurt-Weimar or "Hamburg"-Lübeck (Lübeck has and deserves an article to itself). A borderline case would be Leipzig-Halle (LEJ) as it is close to a village that it totally overshadows (de:Schkeuditz) has significant travel, some of it even out of Europe, serves more than one city (Leipzig and Halle are both close by and served via direct S-Bahn), however it is hardly used by low service airlines and it really isn't in the middle of nowhere, as the S-Bahn ride to either Leipzig or Halle only takes twenty minutes. In this case as per TTCF I'd tend to at least include a word or two about it in the get in sections of Leipzig and Halle. Schkeuditz btw has a roughly steady number of two million passengers per year Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:17, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Please describe Weeze. What makes it a good candidate for an airport article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:21, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Weeze de:Flughafen Weeze is almost the same as Hahn. It is some 70 kilometers from Düsseldorf, at the Dutch-German border, thus serving more than one city, it has no railway connections whatsoever and is not served by many other public transport options. It is flown to primarily/only by a certain Irish low service airline and as of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeze_Airport its PAX numbers range between 2 and two and a half million per annum. I think we have to apply the same policy to both hamlets and both airports. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:30, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Re:Weeze - I don't remotely see it. It would be an article about this one relatively small terminal building. Period. There could not possibly be enough in that building to fill an article, and seems very unlikely that in the rare event someone did get stuck there for a few hours, they would never really need a guide to help them. If it is "almost the same as Hahn", I don't see any reason for Hahn to have an article either. Texugo (talk) 00:34, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Well Maybe I misspoke. The pax numbers appear to be similar. And they are both former military airports that have been converted to Ryanair-use. The problem is: articles on hamlets like Hahn don't seem to be making much sense imho and they should either be converted into articles on the corresponding airport or deleted entirely. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:38, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Articles about real places generally are not deleted on this site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:43, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Obviously it would be redirected if not kept as a full article. It seems to me that mid-sized airports like this just aren't big enough to support full articles on their own. If there are no attractions in Hahn, then it shouldn't have an article. Powers ^(talk) 02:42, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

If this article were redirected, where to? Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:19, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Such airports do deserve an article. They are a key method into and out of a country by travellers. They have specific Get In information that does not fit into any major city in the region and generally the methods of getting to them, or from them, are not always clear to people unfamiliar with the location. They are generally a distance ways from a large town with sleep and eat options so it is very useful to know what is, and what is not, at the airport. This sort of information is very useful to a travel. A lot of travellers touring Europe or visiting an attraction in another European country from another use these airports, this site should inform them what to expect.

As for the propose criteria, 1. yes but with passenger number guideline. 2. should not be a must, 3., 4. and 5. yes --Traveler100 (talk) 06:17, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Which smaller airports do you think do and do not merit their own articles, and do you think it would be possible to include enough information to make an article about a small airport like Frankfurt-Hahn a Guide or Star-level article? Should small airports have a different template than huge airports? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:55, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I do think Hahn, Gardermoen and London Stansted Airport, should be in the list and probably some of the other airports used by Ryanair, Easyjet and the like in Europe. Note this is not about size but airports that are used to get in and out of countries that do not "service connecting flights". East Midlands Airport is probably the borderline case. All should be able to get to usable status, most could get to guide with different choices of accommodating and restaurants as well as multiple ways to get in and a good list of moving out locations. Getting around, in the terminal maybe not much to write about but advice on getting from car parks is often useful at these airports. Many airports will never get to Star but I do not think that has ever been a restriction for creating other locations. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:15, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

What do the rest of you think? It seems to me, there is some skepticism about this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:18, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I still feel that if someone could create an example of what an article for a small airport would actually look like, and what the corresponding town article would look like without the airport info in it, it would make this discussion much easier. Continuing to debate this subject in the abstract doesn't seem to be moving the discussion forward. -- Ryan • (talk) • 09:03, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I simply don't see any evidence that such articles could ever possibly contain much more than a not-very-long Get in section. For example, according to its website, Hahn has exactly one restaurant, plus a McDonalds. Do we really need a guide to help people choose between them? Texugo (talk) 10:15, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I may be missing something, but I'm having trouble seeing what's so bad about the way the Hahn article is currently structured. Why doesn't it serve the reader/traveller well? If it doesn't, couldn't the "By plane" section be enlarged with more information about the airport? Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:12, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

We shouldn't have the article about the village in the first place. This whole discussion got started, because I noticed that because of an attempt to delete the than airport article on Hahn it was jazzed up into a "city" article (and before this discussion started it only consisted of the get in section). Now as to what is gained if we convert the article into an airport article: We don't need to find things to "see", as people don't go there to see stuff. We can include information on parking lots, that would be misplaced in a city article. We have better arguments against the needless creation of half empty articles about every single hut in the woods (because you can technically "sleep there"). If you say the airport doesn't deserve an article, I don't know how you justify the "city" (using the term loosely to the point of meaninglessness) having one. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:47, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

You haven't convinced me. Why shouldn't we have the article about the village? And why would parking be misplaced in the article? Anyway, why don't you create an airport article for this airport in your userspace and link it, so we can see what it would look like and whether it would satisfy any of us as an airport article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:33, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand Traveler100's contention that we need to have articles on "airports that are used to get in and out of countries that do not 'service connecting flights'." Why? The only reason we started writing airport articles in the first place was because some airports are extremely large and complex. If an airport isn't large and complex, then its information can easily be included within the confines of a real destination article. Powers ^(talk) 15:35, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I will - once I have time to do so - write an article on a generic example airport as I don't know the real facts about the real airports exactly. And the question about the destinations... I think you'll notice yourself that Hahn and Gardermoen are only destinations because of the airport and thus the snake bites her tail. In fact we currently mention the fact that the airport by far outweighs the "city" right in the first paragraph. If we were to change policy on that issue it would also be a nice way to distinguish ourselves from that other travel site... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:01, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't think a generic article about a theoretical airport that doesn't actually exist, if that's what you're proposing to do, will convince anyone. Can you write up a Hahn Airport article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:10, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'd strongly suggest using a real airport, whether it is Hahn or some other. Continuing to base this discussion on theoretical examples is (for me) making it much harder to understand the value of these articles, so seeing a real-world example would be far more useful than a made-up version that might not actually reflect reality.

Regarding your point about some towns not meriting their own article, back at the site's founding a town was named as the lowest level of our WV:Geographical hierarchy when discussions were underway to determine how to organize content. Thus in the current example, while the town might exist solely to serve an airport, or a local museum, or a railway station, the town currently gets the article and the airport/museum/railway station information is included in the town article. Over time the bottom-level article types have been expanded to include WV:Park article template and WV:Airport article template for cases where the destination was so large and complex that it merited its own article. See WV:Geographical hierarchy for more info. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:13, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

(double edit conflict) I would strongly encourage you to use Hahn as your example; a "generic airport" where you get to conveniently make up stuff to fill the article will do nothing to change anyone's opinion. I am wholly unconvinced a) that this type of article would ever result in well-rounded complete articles that anyone actually needs, b) that there are enough similarly important small-to-medium-sized airports in the world to warrant changing our rules or making a new class of articles, and c) that the existing information is not just as convenient in an article on Hahn. It may very well be that we otherwise wouldn't have an article for Hahn, pop. 178, but its situation is unique enough to warrant an exception, as we make for other tiny localities with exceptional circumstances. But the circumstances in this case are not nearly common enough to deserve a special class of articles, nor do they merit an exception that would result in a permanently underdeveloped airport article. Texugo (talk) 16:13, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I'd daresay the example airport is London Stansted Airport and the next in line for conversion would be Gardermoen and Hahn I created this as a snarky and badly written template about an airport. Maybe I'll get to updating it and refining it later, but I doubt it at least for today and tomorrow. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:24, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

(beginning at the left side of the page again) I have now thought the issue over a bit and think there are certain advantages, as well as disadvantages to create airport articles for the airports of the category Stansted, Hahn, Gardemoen, Weeze and the likes are in.

Advantages:

1. most travellers care about the airport, thus they don't need information about a towns like Hahn
2. WV stays consistent. Either Stansted doesn't get an airport article or Hahn gets one as well as of now there seems to be a poorly justified exception in place
3. WV avoids the endaround run flea flicker double lateral trick play, that led to the creation of "city" articles that consist of 90% airport and might confuse some readers
4. the new / modification of existing template is better suited to provide the specific kind of information travellers are looking for
5. The get in sections of the cities the airport was previously dealt with get uncluttered

(possible) disadvantages (some of them as mentioned in the discussion and not necessarily shared by me):

1. slippery slope towards more and more "useless" airport articles on minor and outlying airstrips
2. template and/or policy creep
3. Unnecessary spending of limited resources (time of contributors, nerves) that could be better invested in work on city and/or region articles

Feel free to add disadvantages or advantages as you please. I fear that the (implicit) slippery slope argument with the "horror-vision" of German WV or WP articles on airstrips such as this one seems to impact some opinions here, when in fact the airports under discussion are not more than a dozen. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:28, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I think you've made a strong case for a specific exception to the normal airport article criteria for Hahn airport since it is an important airport, there is important transportation info for it, and that info is needed in multiple articles, and thus I'd support seeing it created for the reasons you've cited. The same might be true of the other airports you've cited, on a case-by-case basis. However, the case for a broad exception for such airports does not seem as strong to me, and I think we are better handling this issue on a case-by-case basis rather than trying to find a one-size-fits-all rule for something that you've stated probably only applies to "not more than a dozen" airports. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:09, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Wait, I thought we were still waiting for such a case to be made. There are lots of airports for which "info is needed in multiple articles", but that doesn't mean they are complex enough to justify a separate article. Powers ^(talk) 02:49, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Regardless of its supposed importance, I've yet to be convinced that there is or will be enough information to fill out a well-rounded article on the subject, or that anyone would actually need one for an airport that is in no way complex. It sounds like this would turn out to be little more than a glorified Get in section. If it's somehow super important not to repeat that bit of transportation info, I'd rather see it covered in the Get in section of the relevant region article, and to keep our airport articles to only the large and complex ones with so much stuff that the traveller may actually need help deciding between the buy/eat/drink/sleep options. Texugo (talk) 10:42, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll note that all articles (or all articles that haven't escaped notice) that mention LaGuardia Airport as a "Get in" option link to New York City#LaGuardia Airport. I don't think it would be at all ridiculous to have an article about LaGuardia Airport, but is it really essential? Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:07, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Terminal info

One of the most frequent annoyances I have with official airport websites is that it is not very easy to find what airlines go to which terminals.

Would it be helpful to have a standard template for huge airports that explains what flights will depart from where? Shii (talk) 16:32, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

You can put that info in the "Flights" section of the airport template. See LAX#Flights and SFO#Flights for examples. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:56, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Auckland airport

Auckland airport w:Auckland_Airport is New Zealand's biggest airport, and the gateway into New Zealand. It is also one of the best places to connect to many pacific island nations. It handled 15,231,802 passengers last year (8,294,538 international and 7,016,977 domestic).

Although New Zealand is relatively small, I think think the fact that Auckland connects you to a huge variety of pacific destinations as well as all over New Zealand makes it worthy of article status. Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:27, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Mactan Cebu airport?

This is the Philippines' 2nd most important airport, located in the 2nd largest urban area, Metro Cebu. It is a major hub for domestic flights and has many filghts to other Asian destinations, but (I think) none across the Pacific or to Europe. Many travellers, including me, prefer it to Manila Airport as a way to enter the country because it has shorter lines and generally much less hassle. See Talk:Dumaguete#Comment.2C_anyone.3F for a discussion.

Currently it is written up in two articles on cities within Metro Cebu, Lapu Lapu where it is actually located and Cebu City which is the biggest city of the group. There should be only one writeup but I am not sure if it should go in Lapu Lapu or a separate airport article. Comment, anyone? Pashley (talk) 13:06, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Is it big and complex enough to merit its own article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Given the reasons you prefer it for, I am inclined to believe it is not huge or complicated. But I would not think an airport like Stansted is huge and complicated either... Yet it has its own page... So maybe my judgment is not the gold standard ;-) Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:21, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Stansted has very high traffic, is far from London, such that the ground transportation section is important, and also is a place where more travellers than normal sleep. All that said, while the article about that airport is useful, it's only an Outline and lacks content in several sections. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:58, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

For now, I have created redirects at Mactan-Cebu International Airport and Cebu Airport, both pointing to the "By plane" section of the Lapu Lapu article. I have not tackled merging text from Cebu_(city)#Get_in there & am not likely to, though I think it would be a good idea. Pashley (talk) 15:56, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I have done the merge, long after writing the above. Meanwhile, flights direct to Los Angeles have been added, so it is becoming more of an international airport.

This one is worth monitoring since at some point is will likely become important enough to deserve an article, but I do not think it is there yet. Pashley (talk) 00:06, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Criteria for airport articles getting broader?

I noticed that some smaller airports are getting created recently, such as Paris_Orly_Airport and Tokyo_Haneda_Airport. Is this a problem since they don't really fit the criteria of "Does the airport service connecting flights?" particularly well. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:42, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps somewhat like my remarks above for an article about LaGuardia Airport, of which there is none: "I don't think it would be at all ridiculous to have an article about LaGuardia Airport, but is it really essential?" But now that these articles have been created, I think the question is whether the traveler would be served better by their being maintained and if possible improved, or merged and redirected. What do you think? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:59, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Why does Haneda not fit the criteria? In my experience the International (Europe in my case) to Domestic (or other Asian destinations) is less hassle than LAX or Heathrow for example. As for Paris cannot comment, always try to avoid as have some of the worst lost luggage records and are more lightly to be hit by industrial action than other countries. --Traveler100 (talk) 14:04, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

For the record, Haneda is actually an awesome airport. Its main benefit is that it gets you close to the center of Tokyo, with no need to use the awful Tokyo_Narita_Airport that is far away. The criteria is not clear on what constitutes 'connections', but typically you do not use Haneda for an international connection (i.e. between Seoul and Los Angeles). You can use it for domestic connections, but even so the lack of a wide range of international connections (and the typically higher cost of those few flights) means that it doesn't hit the criteria as I read it.

Please note that I'm not looking at a VFD for this article, but seeing a trend I feel compelled to ask at what limit do we actually place on the size and function of an airport being used to create a new article? Ikan's ttcf criteria would suggest that multiple articles for each small airport in a city is not desirable since it would become confusing --Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:53, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, but LaGuardia and Orly are not small, and I don't think Haneda is, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:59, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

It comes to the definition of 'small'. I thought the purpose of the Airport articles were for the largest airports in the world, and LaGuardia (for example) doesn't fall into that category.

I did ask earlier about w:Shanghai_Hongqiao_International_Airport, which is one of China's busiest airports but not among the major ones in terms of size or international connections. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:08, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

My feeling is that in the case of airport articles that aren't obviously necessary but may be helpful, I wouldn't suggest starting them but would have a different standard for merging/redirecting them than starting them in the first place. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:53, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Fifty busiest airports by passenger numbers as of 2015 - names that redlink

So I looked at the list of busiest airports by passenger traffic to see how many of them have articles. Not that the following list of redlinks is no endorsement of any of them getting an article, it's just intended to start a discussion. If the redlink is due to a lack of a redirect, said redirect should of course be created as the spelling used by Wikipedia is a likely search term. Without further ado:

1. Denver International Airport serving Denver (ranked 19th; 54,014,502 passengers) DEN ^IATA
2. Indira Gandhi International Airport serving Delhi (ranked 25th; 45,981,773 passengers) DEL ^IATA
3. McCarran International Airport serving Las Vegas (ranked 26th; 45,356,580 passengers) LAS ^IATA
4. Charlotte Douglas International Airport serving Charlotte (ranked 27th; 44,876,627 passengers) CLT ^IATA
5. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport serving Phoenix (ranked 29th; 44,003,840 passengers) PHX ^IATA
6. Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport serving Chengdu (ranked 32nd; 42,244,842 passengers) CTU ^IATA
7. Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport serving Mumbai/Bombay (ranked 35th 40,637,377 passengers) BOM ^IATA
8. Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport serving Shenzhen (ranked 39th; 39,721,619 passengers) SZX ^IATA
9. São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport serving São Paulo (ranked 41st 39,213,865 passengers) GRU ^IATA
10. Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport serving Shanghai (ranked 42nd 39,090,699 passengers) SHA ^IATA
11. Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport serving Taipei (ranked 44th 38,473,333 passengers) TPE ^IATA
12. Kunming Changshui International Airport serving Kunming (ranked 46th 37,523,345 passengers) KMG ^IATA
13. Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport serving the Twin Cities (ranked 50th 36,556,281 passengers) MSP ^IATA

Many of those airports are to be found in either East Asia or the US. I think the former may in be in part due to the geographic composition of our userbase while the latter might be due to the immense popularity of domestic air travel in the US arguably "inflating" the numbers of airports that are subjectively thought to not be all that important or complicated. Again, no name on this list needs to be created as an airport article just for being on this list, but I think it is interesting to know what we cover and what we don't. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:57, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

So out of those thirteen airport redlinks that are more than a typo more than one third (DEN, LAS, PHX, MSP and CLT) are in the USA (note that EWR ranked 47th does not redlink). Two are in India. One is in Taiwan. One is in Brazil. The rest - another four airports - are in China. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:20, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Airports on the the "30 busiest by international traffic 2015" list that redlink

Given that one of our criteria is or seems to be the number of international flights, those are the airports on the international flights list that redlink; airports that appear on both lists will be mentioned twice; the figure is their total passenger number:

1. Taoyuan International Airport serving Taipei (ranked 11th; 38,103,889 total passengers) TPE ^IATA
2. Hamad International Airport serving Doha (ranked 16th; 30,906,303 total passengers) DOH ^IATA
3. Dublin Airport serving Dublin (ranked 23rd; 24,876,506 total passengers) DUB ^IATA
4. Abu Dhabi International Airport serving Abu Dhabi (ranked 26th 23,225,98 total passengers) AUH ^IATA
5. Brussels Airport serving Brussels (ranked 27th 22,841,994 total passengers) BRU ^IATA
6. Antalya Airport serving Antalya (ranked 30th 20,786,255 total passengers) AYT ^IATA

Here we have a slightly different picture. Only one airport appears on both lists (the one serving Taipei) and while it is ranked highest of the redlinking ones on this list, its rank on the other list is comparatively low. An interesting aspect is the location of those airports. While the total traffic list has no redlinking airport in Europe after typos have been fixed, there are two here (Brussels and Dublin). Similarly there is no redlinking airport in the Middle East on the above list but here we have Doha, Abu Dhabi and Antalya. The fact that Taipei appears on both lists has been mentioned already. All airports on this list are in comparatively small countries while most in the above list were in relatively large countries both by surface area and by population. Antalya might be an artifact in several ways, and might be on this list (at its 30th and last place) mostly because it is a holiday destination with little to no connecting traffic or business travel. The other airports are on this list by virtue of almost every flight of any considerable length being "international" - I'm not sure whether some of those airports even have domestic commercial flights. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Airports on the "30 busiest by aircraft movement 2015" list

There is one airport in the US that shows up on the "aircraft movement" top 30 list, but neither the international flights nor the passenger top 50 that redlinks:

1. Philadelphia International Airport serving Philadelphia (ranked 25th 411,368 aircraft movements) PHL ^IATA

All other redlinking airports on that list are also on the top 50 by passenger traffic list and are:

1. Denver International Airport serving Denver (ranked 6th 541,213 aircraft movements) DEN ^IATA
2. Charlotte Douglas International Airport serving Charlotte (ranked 7th 540,944 aircraft movements) CLT ^IATA
3. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport serving Phoenix (ranked 17th 439,035 aircraft movements) PHX ^IATA
4. Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport serving the Twin Cities (ranked 28th 403,151 aircraft movements) MSP ^IATA

All of those airports are in the USA. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:54, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Discussion and analysis

So all in all, there are 19 airports that show up on any of those lists, one that shows up both in the top 50 overall and the top 30 by international flights, one that only shows up in the worldwide top 30 by aircraft movements but not the top fifty worldwide, nine that show up in the top fifty by passengers but not the top thirty by aircraft movements of which eight do not show up on the top thirty by international passengers. This was initially just an analysis of the one list, but ultimately I decided to analyze all three (if someone can point to a good summary of airports by connecting flights, please do so) and I think the results are worthy of discussion. But as this amount of data and amateur analysis on my part is probably a bit much, I will stop typing on this for now. Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:01, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

That is very impressive analysis conducted. Thanks! --Andrewssi2 (talk) 20:24, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome. What do you think should be the conclusion, if any? I think the airport of Taipei is the only one that springs at me as a glaring omission from its stats alone, but I don't know how complex its layout is nor how many connecting flights it serves. I'd imagine that Taipei actually sees relatively few connecting flights as high speed rail all but killed flights on the island itself (and people usually don't fly to outlying ROC islands from outside the ROC) and Taiwan is a bit "isolated" so to speak with few thinkable itineraries making sense with a change in TPE as opposed to direct flights or a change elsewhere. But I've never been there, so I might well be wrong. I think the Indian airports on the list might also make good articles but it seems our current editor base has a bit of a blind spot in the region. Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:01, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Taipei is a good transit point between destinations in the East Asia region, although somewhat less for global ones. There isn't too much content in Taipei#Get_in but we could give it a start. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:33, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

What about Sao Paulo and the two Indian ones? Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:37, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I think it would depend partly on how complex the airports themselves and the ways to get ground transportation to and from those airports are. I'd second Andrew's praise for that great analysis and presentation! Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:08, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Indian airports tend not to be great international hubs (a result I guess of being squeezed between Singapore and Dubai!). Even travel to smaller Indian cities tends to be more convenient through Singapore than the big Indian airports themselves. That said I'm sure they can be potential articles. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

So how do they get their passenger numbers if few people connect through them? Is it all Origin and Destination for those Indian cities? Because I'm not sure whether Indians do all that much domestic flying - at least compared to Americans Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:09, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

All the poor Indians surely don't, but remember that there are a billion people in India, as compared to about 300 million in the U.S. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘True, but they seem to do so at a lesser rate than the roughly one billion Chinese. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:29, 20 February 2017 (UTC) ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘It's true Indians don't do much Domestic air travel like Americans but you can see the numbers are changing in recent days. Many Domestic charters are being started and Airports are attracting more travellers between Major cities.Sulthan90 (talk) 12:41, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Taipei Airport

Given what the Wikipedia article says, the airport has several terminals is (or will soon be) connected to the urban rail system of its city. The article is naturally relatively silent on the options to eat or sleep at the airport, but I think it's not an unreasonable assumption that they exist. I think a pretty good outline can be made by looking up the information in the Taipei article, the website of the airport and the Wikipedia article. It won't be as good as something written by someone who's actually been there, but with any luck having an article will entice someone with local knowledge to fill in the details. What do you think? Should we create the article or should we put it on our "requested articles" list or neither? Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:08, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

The case for Doha

Doha does not show up among the fifty busiest overall, however, it shows up among the thirty busiest by international flights and in the (weirdly written and low information) list of "Most connected" airports with supposedly 74 countries served. True, that's less than Dubai (96 countries) and the number of total destinations is likely lower than Frankfurt's 293, but I think Doha still counts in the category of "Middle Eastern Hub" where many people - particularly those flying on Gulf carriers - change planes. It is also a new airport having only opened in 2014 so there might be SEO considerations; and if the "preliminary" 2016 data is to be believed it has now eked its way into the 50th spot among the busiest airports in the world. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:37, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I would be happy to see an article on Doha airport. As I live near an airport now is served by Quatar and they are extending their flights to Australia and New Zealand, I might transit there on a future trip, and would like to compare it with other possibilities. AlasdairW (talk) 23:36, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Boston Logan

Hello! I didn't notice it on the list, but I was considering making an article for this airport. (when I have time...) It's not as big as Frankfurt or Heathrow, but has places to sleep and several connecting flights, which I guess is the jazz for airports? Thank you for the good R&D on this! --ButteBag (talk) 22:18, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

As I said (or hope I've said) the appearance on this list of any given airport is no more grounds for an article being made than the non-appearance is grounds for an article not being made. That being said, what's your opinion on the American airports on this list? Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:01, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh yeah, those are all the big boys I can think of. (Assuming we already have articles for NYC, ATL, SFO & LAX.) I think there is a monster in Texas too... IAH I think? Thanks for pitching me a slow one, lol! --ButteBag (talk) 23:05, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

My question wasn't whether they are big (all of those airports are of some size, otherwise they wouldn't be on this list) but rather whether you think they are complicated enough and serve enough connecting flights to get their own articles. Btw, we have an "article" on IAH but it's the barest of bare outlines and needs love or merging. Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:09, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Hmmmmm, I've only been to CLT and MSP recently, and they were both rather large and complex. But I just flew to there and left, without hanging around. I've connected through IAH several times on my way to Mexico and recall it being very complex. There are multiple terminals, a tram/subway thing, moving sidewalks, at least one mall, a handful of food courts, and on. (this is all anecdotal, however, so not sure how helpful I can be here. (I think almost every "complex" airport I've been to was in Europe. (except maybe ORD.))) Hope that helps at all, thanks! --ButteBag (talk) 02:27, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Well looking at the state of the IAH article right now, even that little information helps... Hobbitschuster (talk) 03:09, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Denver airport

Has just been created. Please let me know whether that was a good idea. Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:23, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Generally we only create new subarticles when the information becomes too lengthy for the parent article. That doesn't seem like it's the case here. Powers ^(talk) 20:30, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

That may be true, but it seems the airport is at least as complex as IAH which has an article. By number of flights it's larger and unlike IAH it has not undergone a precipitous decline in recent years. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:05, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I've always considered Denver Airport to be a borderline case, which has prevented me from plunging forward and making an article for it. But since someone has gone ahead and created it, we might as well try developing it. Plus, this gives me the perfect excuse to write a little about all the wacky conspiracy theories around that place, a subject matter which I absolutely adore. PerryPlanet (talk) 21:03, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Go ahead. You have my endorsement and encouragement. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:36, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Follow up

It's been a while since I first put together those lists (and below I put together a list for the following year as well, though there were no huge new developments). I must say there have been a lot of newly created airport articles, especially in the last few weeks and months. Thanks for that. I think we may still create the "missing" airports but right now getting existing articles up to snuff should also be a priority. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:09, 23 January 2018 (UTC) I will just list the airports from any list that still redlink for ease of reference; I will not give their position and whatnot again as that can be looked up in the WP page or by looking upwards or downwards here...

1. Charlotte Douglas International Airport
2. Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport
3. Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport
4. Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport
5. Kunming Changshui International Airport
6. Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport
7. Philadelphia International Airport (only on the "aircraft movement" list)

The following are only on the "busiest international" list:

1. Dublin Airport
2. Abu Dhabi International Airport
3. Brussels Airport
4. Antalya Airport

None of the airports on the 2016 that redlink weren't already on the 2015 list. Similarly, on the "preliminary" list for international airports and traffic, only Dublin Airport and Abu Dhabi International Airport redlink. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:17, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Reorganize the list of airports

Maybe by status with a further subdivision of the outline airports into "decent outlines" and "bare outlines" or something along those lines - the current subdivision ironically puts a previous FTT in the "not so good" category. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:03, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Contradictory and unhelpful policies regarding airport articles and their status ratings

Swept in from the pub

So I have a hunch this issue has been brought up before - potentially by me, maybe by others - but airport status rankings currently place a lot of emphasis on eat and sleep listings. As the requirements for an airport to be ranked usable show: "Has at least a Ground transportation section and one Eat and Sleep listing each with contact information. There is at least a basic list of terminals and some airline information." The requirements to be ranked "guide" meanwhile say the following: "Has different choices for accommodation and eating/drinking, and information on flights, airlines and terminals. Listings and layout closely match the manual of style. There will be multiple ways to get in, some suggestions for moving out, and information on getting around." Now as per the letter of policy LAX would have to be reassessed as "outline" because it currently says ""he stretch of West Century Boulevard leading into the airport from I-405 is lined with hotels. Additionally, you can find many airport hotels south of the airport in El Segundo or east of I-405 in Inglewood." in the sleep section and there is not a listing to be found. Similar things apply for other airports.

However, we have an established consensus (don't ask me where) to only list hotels physically attached to the airport in order to discourage location touting. This however, will in some cases mean that there is no hotel that can legally be listed, which would raise both "can you sleep there" questions (though I have never heard of airports throwing out people with a ticket sleeping there) and condemn the airport article to perpetual outline status.

But that's not all. As can be seen, there also need to be eat listings. Now I understand that in the era of surcharges on everything many a hungry traveler will pass through airports hungry and they might be enticed to use a layover for some fine or not so fine dining. However as per WV:Boring, we have a policy not to list Fast Food places that are figuratively a tenth of a dollar for twelve pieces. So what now to do about an airport that only has chain restaurants of the Dull and Boring categories? Should they be listed - even several of them - in contravention for our policy on boring places just to have grounds for promotion to guide and thus eligibility to be FTT? (btw of the six guide airport articles, three have already been featured, one is currently nominated and of the other two one is in England and one in the US which might raise geographic issues down the line)

Now I can only speak for myself, but I would not consider the availability of hotels or the exact names and locations of the generic fast food franchises my primary concerns when reading up about an airport. Yet our status criteria make that the most important yardstick. Should that be changed, if so, how? Keep in mind that travel topics have criteria different from those for destination style articles and airports are arguably somewhere in the middle between those two. Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:32, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Does anybody have any opinion on this? @Traveler100: any opinion? Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:00, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Airport places to eat tend all to be chains. If you are lucky then it will be a local chain of 10 restaurants. The quickest way of telling the reader that the only place to eat in zone X is a run-of-the-mill burger chain is to just give its name. "It's often useful to briefly mention what major popular chains are in the area, and to note where they are, but avoid spending too much time on them" comes from WV:Boring. The only airports I can think of that have good independent cafes are the tiny ones with 3 flights per day that we won't have articles on.

I think that we should be a bit more flexible on sleep, and include any hotels that are within 2km of the airport (i.e. a reasonable walk) even if they are not on the airport campus. Sleep could also include suggestions of the best places to sleep rough - "There are comfortable full length benches without arms by gate 50". AlasdairW (talk) 21:19, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that policy as written and the helpful tool now displayed at the WV:Airport Expedition suggest we should have eat listings. I tend to agree on your point regarding sleep (and look at Frankfurt airport for one approach to this) but see the potential of this being abused by location touters or leading to needless discussions, especially if an airport is close to communities that predate it or have other functions besides serving the airport. I'm not an expert on all the things New York (that would be, I guess User:Ikan Kekek) but my understanding is that JFK airport is - at one side at least - rather close to a NYC neighborhood of the name of Jamaica, which has a lot of hotels which may or may not have anything to do with the airport. Which of those should be listed if we loosen the "physically attached to the airport" requirements? Furthermore, I do not think an airport article that has ten listings each in eat and sleep but a badly formatted and outdated list of flights is better than one where sleep consist of "there are no hotels at the airports but places X, Y and Z have plenty of hotels so see those articles" and eat says "If boring chain food is what you crave, the world is your oyster at this airport with establishments of Burger Kong, Slurm and Soylent Green at your disposal." as long as the other sections contain information and it enables me to not get lost at the airport. Or am I seeing this wrong? Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:37, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) AlasdairW, I think that's taking WV:Boring a bit out of context. We avoid detailing chain restaurants when there are other options, but in an airport there might not be. (I wonder if that's even the case, particularly in the large airports that most of our airport articles are about, but certainly most of the restaurants are still chains, so I'll stop nit-picking.) Airports are also places people go because they have to, not because the airport itself is the destination. And airport restaurants, even if they are chains, may need a bit more explanation than normal; the whole world knows McDonald's, but even people from just the other side of the country may not know Chick-fil-A or In-N-Out Burger. That by itself seems like enough reason to list a chain restaurant: it may be a good opportunity to eat someplace new to you. Airport restaurants can also be very hit-or-miss, so some reviews about which restaurants are consistently (or inconsistently) fast or slow, good or bad, etc., would be useful. (I'd prefer a guidebook that did list McDonald's in order to tell me "it's the only restaurant that isn't overpriced" or "horrendous wait times" or "open later than the other restaurants" or "it's the only restaurant in this terminal, we just saved you the trouble of looking".)

I agree with AlasdairW about Sleep. Giving details about sleeping inside the airport is definitely very useful advice (see http://www.sleepinginairports.net/). And yes, including nearby hotels makes a lot of sense; I never liked that we excluded them, because that rule just doesn't make sense at some airports. However, every city and airport is different, so while we might offer a guideline (e.g. "a reasonable walk"), each airport/city should have its own definition of what constitutes a "nearby" hotel. At LAX you can walk from the airport right onto an urban street, but at ATL I'm not even sure if there's any legal way to walk to the airport, however there are free shuttles to dozens of nearby hotels. To Hobbitschuster's point, in some cities it probably does make sense to link to the adjacent districts for hotel listings, but I don't think that works in every case. Some airports are so isolated that there isn't a nearby district to point to. --Bigpeteb (talk) 22:12, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

In the case of JFK, there's absolutely no reason to list any hotel in Jamaica. Instead, readers should be suggested to look at Queens/Jamaica if they're not staying at a hotel in the airport (I forget whether there is one) and place a huge premium on being as close as possible to the airport. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:11, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I still have mixed feelings about airport articles. But I'm thinking about this discussion today from the POV of an inexperienced traveler (e.g., a university student taking his first solo flight), and here's what I think that kind of traveler would like:

• Some information about how this airport functions. What do you need to do first? Are security lines long or confusing? Will you have to trek from one end to the other? Are there stores or services that are only available if you leave the secured areas? Is the signage worse than usual? How many flights of stairs are between your gate and the airplane, and will you get rained on in between the four (permanent) flights down to the tarmac and the one (portable) flight up the side of the airplane? What's the likelihood of weather-related delays, and why exactly did anyone think it was a good idea to build an airport this big in a place that gets this much snow?
• Some information about sleep. This doesn't necessarily mean "listings". It could be "There's a hotel here, but you could also check our article on the Boondocks neighborhood for a hotel with a shuttle" and "If you need a nap, then your best bet is the benches in Gate 22".
• Some information about food. Again, this doesn't necessarily need to be listings. "There's lots of chain restaurants if you're hungry; expect it to cost 25% more than usual. The lines can be long and slow, especially if you want a pizza, so if you're in a hurry, skip that and grab some fruit and yogurt from one of the kiosks. The price for bottled water is the same at all of the stores."
• Some information about how to cope. Basic things, like where to go for lost or damaged luggage, missed connections, or other things. Bonus points for identifying wheelchair-accessible toilets (if they're not everywhere), rooms for nursing mothers, play areas for children, or other special features.
• Some information about how to arrive and depart. This could mean suggesting an easily identified place to get dropped off or picked up, hours and prices for the city bus service, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Excellent points, and many of these are useful for experienced travelers who don't know a particular airport well, too. I guess this thread will eventually be moved to Wikivoyage talk:Airport Expedition, where it will serve as a good reference for people who are starting or editing airport articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:01, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

To add to that, there are several ranges of travelers to consider: inexperienced vs experienced, pleasure (may prefer cheap food) vs business (may prefer expensive food since it's paid for by their company), domestic vs foreign (may not be familiar with the country's chain restaurants or even their cuisine).

The Eat and Sleep sections may not need to have listings, but I think in most cases it would improve the quality of articles substantially, and make them more useful for a wide variety of travelers. Someone with a short connection might want to know the fastest restaurant (or the fastest one that's close to their gates), while someone with a long connection may want a slow but nicer restaurant to kill time. Listings can provide that kind of information. Someone who's making an overnight connection just wants any hotel to sleep in; if there's a nearby district to point to, that's fine, but if there are 4 hotels directly adjacent to the airport, wouldn't it be nice to just list them? We can even do both: list a few hotels, and also point to nearby districts. --Bigpeteb (talk) 19:14, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

One thing that makes airports somewhat unique among our articles is that the airports themselves often maintain web sites with more complete and up-to-date information on traveler amenities than we could ever hope to have. With that in mind, perhaps we should focus our articles on the sort of thing that isn't covered on airport web sites: which restaurants to avoid, tips and tricks, places to 'park your carcasses' within the terminal, etc. Powers ^(talk) 00:57, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

There are also places where pricing info on the fast food places can be useful. e.g. At one Chinese airport (Shanghai Pudong, I think) I found many places expensive & some chains like SPR gouging (around 80 rmb for a coffee their downtown locations sell for 28!). KFC had the same prices as downtown so it was among the cheapest, along with Burger King & a few Chinese places. Pashley (talk) 17:13, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Former airport articles that have been merged and/or redirected

We might wish to keep a list of them here manually, as it is otherwise extremely hard to track them:

• George Bush Intercontinental Airport
• Hamburg Airport
• that one in Cuba whose name I've forgotten
• East Midlands Airport was created as a redirect.
• Robin Hood Airport (created as a redirect)
• Cheyenne Regional Airport (now a redirect) was created 8 May 2017 by User 174.45.128.124, and was taken off for merger on 9 May by Andrewssi2 because CYS was "too small". Join the conversation page! Template:Airport Expidition Talk about CYS See the original page at Old Page

Norman Manley International Airport

This article was recently created. Does that airport meet the criteria? Pashley (talk) 21:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Let's discuss this, but the article had to be deleted for uncredited copying from w:Norman Manley International Airport. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:25, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

So if a genuine Wikivoyage article about this airport is created, I think it faces at least 2 tests: (1) Is the airport complex or simple to navigate? (2) Are there a lot of places to eat, drink and shop there? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:31, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

It looks doubtful - 22 flights today, and 25 places to eat, drink and shop there. it is the 14th busiest airport in the Caribbean. AlasdairW (talk) 21:56, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Redirects?

This came up at Wikivoyage:Travellers'_pub#Should_we_create_an_article_for_Jeju_airport.3F but it seemed to me there is a more general point worth mentioning here.

Should we have redirects for significant airports that do not rate their own articles? e.g. I have created some like Hongqiao Airport and Mactan-Cebu International Airport. Do we need a policy on when to do that? It seems to me it is worth doing for airports that might eventually get full articles; other articles can link to the redirect & will not need changes if the redirect is later replaced by a full article.

What about airports that serve a whole region so they might have links from many towns? Or airports located between two cities & serving both? For example, the same airport currently has descriptions at both Cagayan_de_Oro#By_plane and Iligan#By_plane and the two are not linked; how should that be handled? Pashley (talk) 21:03, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I think creating a redirect with the name of a popular airport that does not have an airport article is a good idea. It is a term a reader could enter. As for places with links from many towns or servers two towns I would say that one city article should be picked at the location for the majority of information and the target for redirects. Other towns in the area would contain information related to getting between that town an the airport and maybe some basic information, but then link to the other page. The link could be name or IATA code. Keeping information on an airport mainly on one page helps with updates and changes of information. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:31, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Leipzig/Halle Airport (physically located in Schkeuditz) is another case - not nearly big enough for its own article, but about equidistant between two major cities. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:36, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Name starts with Leipzig, airport code is starts with L, is the Leipzig side of the A9. Pick one of the cities, I would suggest Leipzig, and make that the main article for information but obviously mention in Halle and link to the other article. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:44, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Hotels near small airports

In Small and medium sized airports editors are told to add listings for hotels near the airport. I think what is meant is hotels conveniently situated for those transferring at the airport or in the town, or arriving at a time of day when travelling to a hotel somewhere else is awkward.

For small airports there are often no hotels primarily serving airport passengers, and those hotels that happen to be near may not be those that are convenient, e.g. where there is transport to town but not directly to the closest hotels. Also, if there are no transfers at the airport but transport to town, there is no reason to stay close to the airport.

What about "Check that there are Sleep listing for hotels conveniently situated for those transferring or arriving by plane, and add if needed. If the hotels would not otherwise deserve a listing, consider having a separate subsection for these". (I think "a couple" of hotels can overwhelm the Sleep in non-districtified cities and towns.)

--LPfi (talk) 07:32, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Abandoned airports

Ran across 16 Of The Most Amazing Abandoned Airports In The World. A listicle designed to expose you to lots of ads, but it does include some interesting stuff. Pashley (talk) 14:32, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

on a more policy oriented point, what are we to do if an airport we cover shuts down permanently? Hobbitschuster (talk) 01:12, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

on shout down airports, it should maybe mentioned that flights no longer go there in a city article as people may not be aware of the change, but a listing would only be warranted if other attractions are still there. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:02, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

No I mean if we have an airport article on an airport that subsequently shuts down. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet, but the old Munich Denver and Hongkong airports come to mind. Or Tegel (which still exists and doesn't have an article) Hobbitschuster (talk) 07:08, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

I guess, in practice they will end up as "zombie articles" similar to the ones for past events (Olympic Games, world exhibitions etc.) ϒpsilon (talk) 08:05, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Interesting, but inaccurately researched "there hasn’t been a single plane that has taken off from or landed at Castellon-Costa Azahar Airport." - um... Ryanair flies there w:Castellón–Costa_Azahar_Airport Andrewssi2 (talk) 08:26, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

"The European Union has opened a formal investigation into whether both the Canadian company that manages the airport (SNC-Lavalin) and Ryanair are receiving illegal subsidies from the regional government." - Oh Ryanair... Never change... Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:16, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Standardised names for articles

Looking at the list of our airport articles, they follow a confusing and illogical hotchpotch of naming styles:

• Some have the city name followed by the airport name, or just "(international) airport" where there's no additional name, e.g. Istanbul Atatürk Airport, Paris Orly Airport, Auckland Airport, Frankfurt Airport
• Some (quite a lot actually) just have the 'name' of the airport without any reference to the city it serves, e.g. O.R. Tambo International Airport, Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport.
• Three have completely irregular names that don't follow either pattern: Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, Milano Malpensa Airport (why use Italian? Wikipedia doesn't), and Oslo Airport, Gardermoen.
• Some also have unnecessary punctuation marks like dashes and hyphens, e.g. Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport, and the above use of a comma.

Now I know that most of these are probably reflecting the airport's official name, but frankly that does not best serve the traveller. We should pick one naming system that works, and stick to it. One particularly stupid example for the category list is if I'm looking for "London" under L, I find London Stansted, but Heathrow and Gatwick are nowhere to be seen, because they're listed under H and G, respectively. In reverse, having spotted Heathrow, I might then look for Stansted under S, and consequently assume there is no article for that airport.

My personal favourite system will always be [city] [airport name] (International) Airport, without any weird punctuation, of the type seen in bullet 1 above. This is most useful to travellers, as at a glance it gives them the city (and by extension country and continent), the common name, and confirmation that they're reading an airport article. It also means that all airports serving a particular city will be next to each other on the category list. However, the most important thing is that we pick a standard naming system that is used consistently on all airport articles.

What does anyone else think? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:18, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that some airports have totally unused "official" names including some dude or lady (e.g. Nürnberg "Albrecht Dürer" Airport - nobody uses that name, not even the airport itself on half its published stuff), some airports are best known by their IATA code or some other abbreviation (e.g. LAX or CDG), some are known without reference to the city they serve (Heathrow, Tegel etc.) and some like Frankfurt Airport or Atlanta Airport are not just sufficiently described with that name but hardly ever referenced to by another name (iirc Frankfurt Airport is actually the full official name). I also think that the "International" should simply be omitted. We don't have an article on a single airport with only domestic flights and it is extremely unlikely we ever will. Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:12, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

But I do agree the naming scheme follows no consistent logic currently. At the very least there should be redirects. Maybe even disambigs for cities with multiple airports. Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:14, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

The naming scheme isn't consistent because there's no international standard for naming airports. As with all article titles, we should use the most common version of the name.

I'm not sure how TT's "[city] [airport name] (International) Airport" scheme would work anyway. Would we title an article "Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport"? That's worse, isn't it? Powers ^(talk) 14:16, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I think it should always be called (city) Airport unless that's ambiguous. Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:30, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree in general. The best names in most cases are things like "Frankfurt Airport", "London Heathrow Airport", etc. If we are going to standardise on anything, it should be those. Also, they should all have redirects from the three-letter IATA codes.

But there are plenty of exceptions. For example airports that serve a region or multiple cities (Cagayan_de_Oro#By_plane or DFW) should not have articles named after just one city. Even redirects from, say, "Dallas Airport" are usually not needed.

It is also OK to have the article at the formal name like Ninoy Aquino International Airport provided the right redirects are in place. That one currently has redirects for the airport code MNL, for Manila Airport, and for the much-used abbreviation NAIA. That is fine. Pashley (talk) 15:47, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I assumed (wrongly, it seems) that Hartsfield and Jackson were other cities, like a Dallas-Fort Worth situation. But what would be the problem with us just calling the article "Atlanta Airport"? The (local) common name of airports is largely irrelevant really, because it will be mostly people from elsewhere searching for and reading airport articles. The airport's full name can still be written in the article, indeed on the very first line of the lead. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:54, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Where we do not have an airport article, redirects should also be used. e.g. Lapu-Lapu#By_plane has redirects at CEB, Cebu Airport and Mactan-Cebu International Airport. Pashley (talk) 15:58, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

(another edit conflict) But what would be the problem with following the formula, and calling MNL's article Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport?

With DFW, you're taking my formula suggestion too literally. "Dallas" and "Fort Worth" are both cities, and they are followed by the word "airport". That's clear, unambiguous and uses the official name, so wouldn't need to be changed. There is no requirement in my proposed formula to only use one city, just that the city / or cities are used, preferably before any other part of the name. If an airport doesn't serve one city, and is universally called something else, then that name can be used instead. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:07, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I do not like "Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport", which I have never seen or heard used, at all since it conflates the common & obvious "Manila Airport" with the formal "Ninoy Aquino International Airport", both of which are used. Much better to have the two titles with one a redirect to the other; I do not think it matters significantly which is article & which is a redirect. Pashley (talk) 16:16, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict numéro drei) OK, point taken. I would therefore tend to prefer "Manila Airport", as it's more obvious to outsiders, if only for navigating the category list. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:22, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Possibly useful general rules:

"International" should never be used in something like "Manila International Airport"; it is just clutter there. Include it only if creating an article or redirect whose title is a formal name that includes the word like "Ninoy Aquino International Airport".

The three-letter IATA codes should never be used as actual article titles, but they should be widely used as redirect titles. Any airport important enough to have its own article must have a redirect from the IATA code, & most others should. I know people who travel a lot & routinely use those codes in conversation. There are only a few I'd use myself, like LAX, CDG or LHR. Pashley (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

"Orlando Airport" is ambiguous because there are two: Orlando International (MCO) and Orlando Executive (ORL). Powers ^(talk) 17:51, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree with those general rules as a starting point, except where "International" is a distinguishing part of the name. There is no reason I can see why the vast majority of airport articles that don't currently use the city name shouldn't incorporate the name from now on. 'London Heathrow Airport', 'New York John F. Kennedy Airport', 'Chicago O'Hare Airport', etc. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:58, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure how I feel about this. We could in some cases use redirects that have the name of the main city served by an airport, rather than putting the name in the title. JFK is a case in point: No-one in New York calls it "New York John F. Kennedy Airport". We call it "JFK" or "Kennedy Airport", and if you wanted to add the city name, it would usually be in the form "New York's Kennedy Airport". Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:51, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

That's interesting, but may I ask why you think it matters (for this discussion) what New Yorkers call it? What best serves the traveller, at least in my view, is a name that tells them the airport serves New York. I doubt many Parisians refer to "Paris Charles de Gaulle", but that's what we've called the article, because that's the clearest name for the widest audience.

Part of the reason why this lack of a naming strategy is bothering me so much is because the only list of airport articles we have is the aforementioned list category page that I've mentioned several times already. We could have a list on an actual page, either within an existing article such as At the airport, or in a new article that acts as a portal for our airport articles in the same way as Cultural attractions acts as a portal for various travel topics. The list could be split in a useful way by continent and city (possibly by country, but the USA is the only one with more than four airport articles), so would sidestep all the usability defects on the category page, but would also mean that, if used in conjunction with a comprehensive plan of redirects (e.g. 'JFK', 'Kennedy Airport', 'New York JFK', 'John F. Kennedy Airport' and 'New York Airport' all redirecting to John F. Kennedy International Airport), there wouldn't need to be any renaming.

So what do you all say to that? Wouldn't a proper List of Airport Articles page solve most of the problems we've discussed here? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:09, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with that, but would it be annotated to state which cities each airport primarily served? One issue is with airports like Newark Airport, which is in a major city (Newark) but is also one of the 3 major airports for New York City. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:01, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it would. Take a look at the draft in my userspace. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:16, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

What should be done with the IATA "all airports" codes? Currently LON redirects to a section of the London article and NYC to the whole New York City article. I'm inclined to think they should become a sort of disambig with links to the city and to all its airports. e.g. NYC would include a link to Newark Airport. Pashley (talk) 13:25, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Should link to the By plane section of the city. I have corrected NYC. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:11, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

How about just using the exact name used in Wikipedia, Wikidata and other sister projects? ϒpsilon (talk) 17:03, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

That would suppose the other sister projects use the exact same name. They do not. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:09, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I checked out some of our airport articles, went to their Wikidata page (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8685, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8691, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36454, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q385406, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60910, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q500253) and compared the Wikidata name and Wikipedia name. At least these six all seem to have the exact same name on WD and WP, though in at least one case (Tokyo Narita) our article was named differently from the other ones. ϒpsilon (talk) 17:39, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

[unindent] ThunderingTyphoons!, it looks like you went live with your list of airport articles page, which is just as well because it's useful. It's possible but IMO a waste of time to quibble at the margins. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:46, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I just thought it was easier to put it up rather than it sitting in my userspace. ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:14, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't sound like we ever came to a consensus about how to name airport articles. Unless the consensus was "Having links and a list of airport articles is good enough for now, so we don't have to decide on a naming policy yet." Is that accurate? --Bigpeteb (talk) 18:35, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, if I had to look for a consensus it is that if <cityname> airport is a commonly used term, then that should be preferred. So, "Sydney Airport" is preferred over any variations including "Kingsford Smith". If there is a name so common that it's internationally known, and there are multiple airports, then it's reasonable to use it. So "Heathrow Airport", is also reasonable. In those intermediate cases, use a simple common name and create redirects, rather than having a complex name in the title. That's only what I gained from reading the above - myself having no real opinions. --Inas (talk) 00:49, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Alternate airports?

Fairly often, I think, various discount airlines choose to fly to airports with lower landing fees, so for example if bound for Hong Kong from Southeast Asia one should consider flights to Macau, for Shanghai consider Hangzhou, for Manila CRK and so on. I am not certain to what extent this applies outside Asia.

Where should these routes be mentioned? Country article? City? Airport? Also, what precautions are needed to avoid this type of cheap flights? Pashley (talk) 13:41, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Well those airports are usually linked in the by plane section of most relevant city articles. Hahn is even part of the disambig line at the top of Frankfurt Airport. Unfortunately, we are a bit inconsistent in how to handle villages whose only relevance lies in a former rinkydink airfield now flown to by the usual suspects. Hahn has an article, while Weeze does not. Frankly, however, most of those "airports" are the product of questionable subsidies the EU is increasingly outlawing. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:04, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Just for fun: Names in the "top 50 airports" list that redlink for 2016.

You might remember that some time ago, I analyzed the names of airports on the top 50 airports in the world list which redlink; now a slightly less drawn out and analyzed list; here are those on the 2016 list that redlink as of now. Keep in mind that two of those that redlinked on the 2015 list when I posted it have since been created.

1. Indira Gandhi International Airport serving Delhi
2. McCarran International Airport serving Las Vegas
3. Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport serving Chengdu
4. Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport serving Mumbai
5. Charlotte Douglas International Airport (do I have to tell you which city it serves?)
6. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport serving Phoenix
7. Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport serving Taipei
8. Kunming Changshui International Airport serving Kunming
9. Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport serving Shenzhen and probably the Hong Kong metro area
10. Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport (note that we do have an article on the primary airport of Shanghai by passenger count)
11. Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport
12. Hamad International Airport serving Doha and a new entrant on the list, just squeaking in at the fiftieth rank

I am not sure whether I'll do much analyzing. I just wanted to point out that some of those don't even have a real listing in their city articles or are just dealt with in one or two lines, which certainly doesn't grok with their traffic numbers. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:44, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I've wondered why we haven't had any airport articles from India. Also, Doha is one of those Middle Eastern hubs where a disproportionately large share of the passengers are transit passengers so that one would certainly need an article (perhaps Abu Dhabi International, home base of Ethiad merits an article as well). --ϒpsilon (talk) 17:49, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Well Etihad just faceplanted pretty badly with their attempts to buy up failing European airlines with Alitalia and Air Berlin going belly-up, so maybe Abu Dhabi isn't a priority right now. That said, I find the Delhi one the most glaring omission. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:52, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

We do have Hongqiao Airport as a redirect to a section of the Shanghai article & I'm inclined to think that is enough. On the other hand, you could make a case for having a redirect from the full formal name "Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport" and quite a good case for giving Hongqiao its own article. Pashley (talk) 01:51, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Can we have some tool that grabs the flight lists of WP

Swept in from the pub

So there is a bit of an inconsistency because we never made consistency a priority there, but the "by plane" sections and airport articles sometimes list which airlines do which flights and sometimes they do not. Problem is, those lists tend to get outdated rather fast and easy. Now it appears to me that the WP articles for certain airports tend to have comparatively well maintained lists of the airlines that fly to a certain airport and the destinations on offer. Copying (and maintaining) them by hand is a task worthy of Sisyphus, but having a link to WP and telling our readers "go find out yourself" is probably not ideal, either (though the WP button would be another argument in favor of listing instead of marker templates). Can we write some code that can grab the list and put it in a format that doesn't botch up everything here so we can include it? Or should we just not list any flights at all? Hobbitschuster (talk) 12:01, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that we should not have lists of airlines in the by plane section, but it's ok to have them in an airport article. My reasoning is the same as yours: lists get outdated fast and easy. In the By plane section, if there's an airport article it will probably be linked. I wouldn't be opposed to something automated that pulls it in from WP so long as it's easy to use. DethDestroyerOfWords (talk) 15:04, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

If there is such a tool, I support using it for listing flights in airport articles. For city articles tables of flights are probably a little bulky, unless they can be put in an expandable box (those that are folded away by default that you can see in some WP articles, for example "Airports in Yunnan" and "Airports in China" in w:Kunming_Changshui_International_Airport#External_links). ϒpsilon (talk) 15:35, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

It is better not to try and maintain a comprehensive list of flights, even in WP. We just need to describe the main destinations (i.e. City X has connections to most major cities in South East Asia). The travel industry invests a lot of money in online tools that will allow the traveler to work out their best flight options, and there is really no need for us to try and address this. Andrewssi2 (talk) 20:44, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

If an airport is served by more than three airlines, there is no point in listing them, just say how many, and mention any that use it as a major hub. Similarly saying the number of destinations and daily flights gives the reader an idea of the scale of the airport - in many cases the airport's website will give the details. Airlines with only two planes serving remote locations are a different matter, these may not show up in online tools and are worth mentioning (e.g. Great Barrier Island). AlasdairW (talk) 20:58, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Saint_Helena_(island) has just started its one flight a day to Johannesburg, and it is fine to provide detail on that. I'd say anything larger is pointless to track here on WV. Andrewssi2 (talk) 21:04, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Well Wikipedia does try to maintain those lists. Even for the Heathrows and LAXs of this world. And they even have stats for certain flights. And it seems that you underestimate the sheer gall some airlines have in establishing a hub in some place and then turning around with a "nevermind" attitude. Sure, Lufthansa is married to FRA, Delta similarly won't abandon ATL and the classic flag carriers seem tied to their capital hubs. But other than that? Ryanair has made and broken quite a few former dusty military airfields into airports with two, three even more million pax per annum. And now many of them have nothing. And there are still many people who seem to be unaware of a lot of travel options. The success of some businesses seems to depend on customers not knowing of any other options. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:29, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

One example that does list flights is Mactan-Cebu International Airport, a redirect into the Lapu-Lapu city article. Pashley (talk) 01:54, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Airport articles that should be merged/redirected

The recent Wikivoyage Editathon was a great shot in the arm for this site! One minor byproduct that we should deal with here is the proliferation of articles about airports that are not really huge as per Wikivoyage:Airport Expedition#Rationale and for which the question at Wikivoyage:Airport Expedition#Article criteria, Does the airport have enough food and shopping options to fill out an entire "Buy" and "Eat and Drink" section?, is answered in the negative. I will propose a list of airport articles to merge and redirect, and I would encourage anyone to add others, as well as to discuss these.

McCarran International Airport - If all that can be said in "Eat and Drink" is "Drinking water fountains can be found throughout the airport", the article should be merged and redirected to Las Vegas. However, I'm quite unsure that there isn't more information that could be added.

Perth Airport (not listed in this project but listed at Airport articles) - Does the 4th busiest airport in Australia need its own article?

Brisbane Airport (not listed in either place) - Does the 3rd busiest airport in Australia need its own article? The article is very sparse except for "Ground transportation" and "Get around".

Tocumen International Airport - Busiest in Central America but not much content.

The following are questionable:

Gimhae International Airport - expressly described this way: "The airport is very safe, and small enough that you will not get lost." If it's so small, why does it need its own article?

I've considered London Stansted Airport and Melbourne Airport, too - Melbourne because you get around the airport solely by walking, and it takes 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other - but both articles are fairly content-laden and both airports get a lot of traffic, so I think it's pretty clear we should keep those articles.

Did I miss any that are classed as stubs? Tocumen was until I just changed it to its correct status, an Outline. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:18, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

There is certainly more to say about McCarran International Airport, which does have lots of dining options. It's sometimes a transfer point for people travelling between the east and west coasts of the US, so there are a significant number of travellers on connecting flights.

I think Tocumen is an important hub, but still, Wikipedia says it has only a third the number of passengers that McCarran has. I don't know how large or complex it is.

Another airport we might consider including in this discussion is Keflavík International Airport, which is a significant international hub but is small and easy to navigate. —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:01, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Both Perth and Brisbane are possible transit airports when flying between Europe and New Zealand. If I am only changing planes in an airport, then basically I am not interested in the city and like being able to look at a separate article (and if flight prices are similar I may quickly read the details of a few airports before I book my flight). AlasdairW (talk) 16:44, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. But in that case, much more content is needed. If you know much about these airports, it would be great if you could help fill in some of the empty or sparse sections. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:41, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Rental car listings

Looking at Los Angeles International Airport, after a recent addition it now has 23 listings for rental car companies, all with no details other than address and phone number.

I couldn't find much guidance elsewhere. On What not to link to, it says to avoid "Rental car operators in cities where they are common (10 or more operating in the city). Typically we don't provide details of national car rental chains in local guides." But that's on a page about external links, not listings. On Where you can stick it, it does say for cars "don't list each individual rental company if they're plentiful".

Before I plunge forward, this seems like a good opportunity to figure out what the policy actually is (or should be). Did I miss an existing policy that already covers this? Whatever the policies are, do they make sense for airport articles? --Bigpeteb (talk) 22:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

As far as I know, the consensus is still represented by "We don't provide details for national chains in local articles, rather we list them once only in the country level article. Where not all national chains operate at a destination, it can be worthwhile to mention by name those that do. Where listing all the rental car agencies operating at a destination would make a list of greater than 9 agencies, the list should be trimmed to a maximum of nine or omitted entirely if there are no significant distinguishing features that can be used to trim the list.". --Inas (talk) 22:49, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Tocumen International Airport

Swept in from the pub

This page for the main airport of Panama City was created as a stub recently. On the Talk Page an "otherstuffexists" argument is made via comparison to Gimhae International Airport, which indeed has similar numbers and is actually smaller than Jeju Airport for which no article exists. I think we should either make this airport into a proper article with template and whatnot or merge it back to Panama City. I have had one or two layovers at PTY, but that does not necessarily mean much... Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:11, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

If it's not going to be deleted I would be happy to take some degree of ownership over this. It's not just that "otherstuffexisits" it's also that the metric for saying we should only have "Huge" stuff on here is based on where the biggest populations exist in the world. This region is small population wise, so therefore the numbers should reflect that and they do. Airports are important, whether they are comfortable or not they are usually the first access point for a traveler.

The airport does qualify for "Article criteria"

J-wonder (talk) 00:24, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm really unconvinced Gimhae International Airport should have its own article. Sure, it's a useful article in some ways, but how is it a more important or complex airport than someplace like John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California? I'm satisfied that there is enough traffic at Tocumen to let the article develop, but in no way would I like to see articles for every medium-sized airport with uncomplicated transportation within and to and from the airport and few things to do while there. I think the article on Stansted is probably justified by the information about sleeping overnight there for early flights, since it's so far out of London, but while I'm OK with a degree of expansion of the number of airport articles, I think we should be cautious about going too far. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:49, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes there is certainly a slippery slope involved. We redirected Hamburg Airport a few months or so ago due to it being too minor. The more airport articles we have, the likelier it becomes that we will one day have an airport article for an airport that is no longer served by any flights or where flights have vastly decreased. I also find it kind of bizarre that Gimhae has an article but Jeju does not... Maybe there is some logic to that, I don't know, I'm not a Korea expert... Hobbitschuster (talk) 01:16, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I think this was discussed somewhere, but Jeju is an "end of the line" airport serving an extremely popular tourist destination just like is the case with McCarran International Airport. I.e. in practice nobody transfers there, but the airport is used for people going to and from the destination. Panama Tocumen on the other hand is to my understanding the most important transfer hub between Mexico and Sao Paulo.

When it comes to the number of airport articles, I think we're starting to have a little too many of them and should pull the emergency break and probably delete some of them. ϒpsilon (talk) 16:00, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Busan pretty "end of the line" as well? It has domestic flights to Seoul and Jeju, so it is unlikely to be part of a domestic connecting itinerary and it has few international flights and I wouldn't know of any not available via Seoul. Plus the airlines will inevitably lose the competition with KTX reducing flights to Seoul. Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:14, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Busan is to some extent used for transit but it's not exactly a global hub. What do you say, Andrew? ϒpsilon (talk) 12:23, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately the editor who created the article seems to not be active on WV any more :( Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:13, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Proliferation of airport articles

Swept in from the pub

In those last few months or so, quite a few new airport articles have been created, some of them with significant empty sections. Now that may just be something that can easily be filled in or those airport articles should never have been created in the first place. What should we do about those existing articles and might it be wise to have a moratorium on the creation of new ones? Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:08, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Yeah... TBH I think the number of airport articles has gotten out of hand. I'm afraid we'll need to delete some airport articles, perhaps even half of them.

When the airport expedition was started some people were concerned that we'd end up with a ton of half-empty articles of airport that really do not need to be described in detail, and while the number of airport articles was fairly stable until last summer or so, if the current trend goes on we'll at some point add up with articles like in the German version. de:Flughafen Heringsdorf, anyone? ϒpsilon (talk) 20:31, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I think in general, we're starting to go overboard. Airport articles are supposed to be reserved for the world's most complicated and busiest airports, where travellers are likely to spend a significant amount of time. Some of the recent additions to the list don't qualify by that criterion.

I would be reluctant to push for the deletion of articles, but would appreciate if users would work on existing airport articles (especially the newer ones) rather than creating new ones. Not to point fingers, but User:MSG17, you have created many of the new pages, but haven't done much to develop each one before moving on. Would you mind improving the dozen or so you've already created before you consider making any more? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 23:52, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Not deletion: Merge and redirect. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:32, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I will start a thread at Wikivoyage talk:Airport Expedition to propose the merging/redirecting of specific articles and link it here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:44, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I can assure you, you are not "pointing fingers". It is true that I have created a lot of new articles, often with nearly half the sections having no or one-line content. While I could add some personal research with planned travels in the summer, you are right that I should turn my focus on looking at adding research of my own to the articles, especially since that is planned, not absolute.
I will back up all the airport articles that I have created somewhere for any future use, and then focus on pruning them - deletion might be possible. I did overestimate the "bar" for airports, and should probably focus more on the busiest airports list from Hobbitschuster (talk) (and even then - some of those may not have enough notability or content for an article) than going off of what I considered "enough international connections" or "too much content on the main page".
Apologies for the inconvenience. MSG17 (talk) 11:30, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

There are quite few fairly significant airports that are currently only redirects, eg. Mactan-Cebu International Airport or Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport, & that seems fine to me. I think the main rule is the same as for deciding if a suburb gets its own article, separate from the city: only if there is already enough text to be unwieldy if kept in the main article. Pashley (talk) 05:10, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

New thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:20, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

MSG17, there's no reason to apologize. The content is useful; the only question is where it's best placed. Some airports can be covered very effectively in the "Get in/By plane" section of the article for the city most served by the airport, while others are humongous, complex, not straightforward to get to and/or full of amenities worth listing, such that an article about them would become way too long to fit well in the article for that city. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:48, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with this completely. Never apologise for adding useful content to Wikivoyage. Speaking of which, I regret that I'm a lot less active at the moment. Life getting in the way. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:10, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Sterile transit

Responding to a question at Wikivoyage:Tourist_office#Transiting_Suvarnabhumi_airport, I could not tell from a quick look at the airport article whether Thailand allows sterile transit, going from one flight to another without passing through customs & immigration controls. This can make a big difference to travellers; a year or two back I flew Philippines-Canada via Seoul and Detroit, and the contrast between them was striking. Korea does have sterile transit so I was able to go gate-to-gate in under half an hour without interacting with any Korean officials, but the US does not allow such transit & Detroit airport was busy; it took me well over an hour in a queue just to reach the immigration control desk. The actual officials were efficient & friendly (I'm Canadian & white; YMMV) but this was still an annoyance. If I'd had a tightly-timed connection I might easily have missed a flight.

We do discuss this some, e.g. at Avoiding_travel_through_the_United_States#Understand, but should we do more? I'd say this should be mentioned in articles for any airport that handles a lot of international connections & perhaps in country articles, & we might consider a table of which countries allow it and/or a section of flying about choosing routes to avoid the problem. Pashley (talk) 17:10, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I think that sterile transit is usually decided at the national level, right? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:28, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I think so too, though I suppose even if the country allows it some airports might not be set up for it. 22:13, 22 July 2018 (UTC)