Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Whittier Airport

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. No consensus to delete. The issue of merging can be discussed on the article's talk page or somebody can be BOLD and just do it. Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:21, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Whittier Airport

Whittier Airport (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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This is not really an airport in the normally understood meaning of the word. This is a gravel airstrip outside a small town. There is no supervision of any kind, no monitoring of runway conditions, no fuel available, and no maintenance of any kind during the winter, meaning Whittier doesn't actually have an airport for large portions of the year. Wikipedia is not a directory of airports and there is nothing notable about this tiny, unstaffed airstrip. A single sentence in the main article on Whittier, Alaska would suffice. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Aviation-related deletion discussions. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Alaska-related deletion discussions. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:39, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:29, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Wikipedia serves as a gazetter and airport information of this sort seems comparable with railways stations or other significant transport junctions. The level of facilities offered at this location seems irrelevant. The proposal to condense the information into an entry at the article for the township indicates that this is not a matter of deletion, per our editing policy. Warden (talk) 20:59, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The level of facilities is relevant, in the same way that a big bus terminal in a city is more notable than a bus stop on a corner in the middle of nowhere. Only 2 airplanes are based at this airport. Not two airlines, two planes in total. This is like having an article on a parking lot with two cars in it. if it were a private airstrip we wouldn't even be having this discussion. There are hundreds of tiny airports in Alaska, they aren't all notable unto themselves. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) Trim and merge to Whittier, Alaska#Transportation pretty much per Beeblebrox. Airports aren't inherently notable (this was about all I could find that even directly mentioned them) and this one seems even less notable than other non-inherently notable airports. Nolelover Talk·Contribs 21:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Long standing convention and consensus is that airports are considered notable and Colonel Warden is correct per WP's editing policy and gazetter status. Never seen one, even former ones, deleted. Yes consensus can change, but there has been zero indication of it.--Oakshade (talk) 21:28, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So, you would define a single, narrow, gravel airstrip with absolutely no facilities an "airport"? Do you define your driveway as a superhighway as well? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Apples and oranges. Your driveway is a private facility, not a public-use airport. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Whether its runway is gravel, paved or even a seaplane port with no runway, it's still an officially recognized and public airport. Your driveway/superhighway argument is straw man as nobody has ever claimed this is a major airport capable of accommodating A380s. --Oakshade (talk) 00:40, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
By that line of reasoning if I opened my driveway up to let the public use it it would become notable. However, let's try another, more fitting metaphor: harbors and marinas. These are also open to the public, maintained by governments, and verifiable to exist. Are they all automatically independently notable regardless of size and usage? Beeblebrox (talk) 01:58, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question Just for the sake of clarity, what I believe I am hearing here is an argument than any public use airport of any kind is in that magical realm of "automatic notability". Is that about right, and if so, why? I mean, why are we exempting these articles from WP:N. By this logic a public parking facility or a bus stop should be automatically notable as well so long as its existence can be verified. I honestly do not understand the logic that says a tiny flyspeck of an airstrip is notable just because it is open to the public during the brief periods when it is accessible at all.
For those who don't know, Whittier has notoriously bad weather. It is constantly overcast and raining or snowing, which is why the airport is so minimal, why it is not maintained in winter, and why damages from the earthquake in 1964 have yet to be repaired.
Whittier is an important transportation hub as it links the waters of Prince William Sound with the Alaska Railroad and the highway system, but it has no relevance as an aviation hub because it isn't one. The Alaska Marine Highway has a terminal there that loads and unloads thousands of travelers a year, and many cruise ships dock here now that they can get their busses through the tunnel to their cruise ship dock, yet we don't have articles on those facilities, which serve as important links in Alaska's transportation network. Why not? because they do not have any relevance to a general audience, yet it seems folks insist that this crappy, broken, largely unused airstrip is automatically notable because things that fly are cool and automatically more notable than things that don't. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:53, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Discuss larger merge I see an argument is raging on, which I don't have time to digest in full. As it pertains to Alaska, however, keep this in mind: there are scores of airport articles wherein 1) the airport is very, very small; 2) the community it serves is very, very small; 3) the community and its airport are very much intertwined, especially socioeconomically in the case of isolated smaller villages in The Bush. It seems as though some would use the notability of the airport itself to argue for separate articles. The reality is that you wind up with a bunch of stubs which languish as such for years and years, because there really isn't that much to be said about the topic (or at the very least, if there is anything to be said, it may require real work to do the research involved). Aside from airport articles, we have the same situation with scores of stubs on Alaska radio stations. A bunch of those articles could also be merged, rather than using the notability of the broadcast license as a rationale for having 100+ mostly useless stubs.RadioKAOS (talk) 02:53, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I generally agree that airports play a very important role in the majority of small Alaskan communities. However, as we say where I live "It may rain in Homer, but it's shittier in Whittier" meaning that their weather there, being wedged on a narrow (semi) livable spot between the sound and the glaciers of the Chugach, makes it so that the airport is hardly relevant at all and it seems mostly used for local "flightseeing" trips on the odd clear day, not actual transportation from point A to point B as is normally the case. As such I don't see how it merits more than the briefest of mentions in the main article as opposed to having it all dolled up like a real airport that serves a vital purpose. Ok, I'll stop going on and on now and let others continue discussing this. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:16, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment There are really two options: Keep or Merge with Whittier, Alaska. The article suggests about two aircraft movements per day. Since (I understand) light aircraft are normal measn of communication between towns etc in Alaska, it might be more appropriate to treat it as a local facility in Whitter and thus merge this into its article. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:13, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - general aviation-only airstrips are not notable, period. Bearian (talk) 20:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Funny you would mention that. That article contains a hatnote linking to a similar article. Combined, I don't have even a faint hint of a coherent history of that facility. Maybe the presumed notability of the airport is all that matters. Perhaps in reality, it's more like having PD sources available to fill up article content. Once you have that, then start churning out article after article, sometimes without regard to factual accuracy or usefulness, or whether or not the article is exclusively a mirror of information found in a million other places on the web. I think I can very safely state that Kwigillingok Airport will never achieve GA status within my lifetime.
See the pattern?
Notability of airport ---> FAA materials in the public domain
Notability of broadcast license ---> FCC materials in the public domain
Notability of NRHP listing ---> NPS materials in the public domain
Same situation each time. Lots of useless articles unleashed on Wikipedia, only for some member of a related WP to have to figure out what the hell to do with them. If the articles actually are useful, well, I guess it's up to someone else (read: The Story of Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody) to do the actual writing and sourcing. The ratio of articles which are actually being edited by anyone who gives a shit versus articles created merely out of wholecloth is far too low in the cases of all three categories I list above.RadioKAOS (talk) 01:27, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Convention is that any public-use airport with an ICAO code or IATA code is inherently notable. Yes, this place has minimal notability, but it has enough. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 15:50, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge there isn't inherent notability here, and even for those that argue that there could be, the circumstances negate that. A tidy "smerge" (summarize and merge) into the Whittier article is sufficient to cover this subject, with a redirect from the title. Imzadi 1979 → 09:02, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Public airports are notable enough for their own articles. Dough4872 16:20, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As I mentioned earlier, it seems to be based on the idea that anything related to aviation is automatically more notable than other forms of transportation. The ferry and cruise ship docks in Whittier, along with the mixed use rail/auto tunnel through a mountain are the real transportation facilities in Whittier, there aren't any WP:RS of any kind that demonstrate notability of this largely unused gravel airstrip, (it is not an airport by any reasonable definition of the word) but we are being asked to cast WP:N aside because having all of 2 airplanes there is just too cool to not cover it. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:40, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that every public airport, regardless of size, that has an airport code has some significance. Getting rid of this article would be the equivalent of getting rid of an article on a small settlement. If this was a private airfield, I would say delete. Dough4872 21:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Err..."I believe". Nothing wrong with you believing, or what you believe, but what are you basing this on? If there was any sort of policy, consensus or even short discussion that said that having one of those two codes makes you automatically notable, this would be an easy keep for me. Not only do I not see those discussions, I don't think they would fly. Nolelover Talk·Contribs 22:13, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports/Notability indicates that "General aviation (civilian non-airline) airports which meet one of the following criteria are considered notable: (1) it is marketed to the public for aviation-related services (2) it is currently or formerly owned by a local, regional or national government entity" Whittier Airport meets this criteria as it is "a state-owned public-use airport". Dough4872 00:09, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as failing WP:GNG unless substantial reliable sources can be found that cover the subject in depth. Entries in databases do not count as depth. If new sources are added to the article, ping my talk page and I'll take another look. Stuartyeates (talk) 05:05, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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