Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Hughes Airwest Flight 706

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Not promoted at this time. EyeSerenetalk 14:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hughes Airwest Flight 706[edit]

Nominator(s): Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?)


I am nominating this article for A-Class review because after two years in a sandbox the article has passed GA class assessment and I'm hoping to take it to FA class soon. I'm hoping that the process of achieving A-class will identify any weaknesses and/or areas that require improvement or expansion in the meantime.

(You may note that the article is also technically undergoing A-Class review over at WP:AVIATION. Unfortunately that assessment department is rather dead at the moment, but should anyone care, the link for that review is here.) --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?) 04:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And for those wondering why this is in the purview of WP:MILHIST -- the incident in question is a collision between a commercial airliner and a US Marine Corps F-4B Phantom II. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?) 04:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually you can simply link to this page from Aviation and drop the dedicated Aviation assessment -- there's an arrangement between the two projects whereby common articles are granted Aviation A-Class if they pass MilHist A-Class Review (similar to an arrangement between MilHist and the Ships project)... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:27, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: Hiya Mukk ... great to see another outstanding contributor at our humble A-class review. I'm going to do some copyediting; if I change something, it's less likely to mean "you're wrong" and more likely to mean that I can cite a style guide or dictionary for a different way of doing it, or we've been able to get a different way of doing it through FAC before. I made all the following edits (if there were edits to make); feel free to revert. - Dank (push to talk) 15:10, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • "DC-9-31": "DC-9-31". The text should answer questions faster than it raises questions (such as: what's a DC-9-31?). - Dank (push to talk) P.S. To get this to work, I had to fix a problem in the linked article: see the second bullet point at WP:MOSHEAD. Subsection names in an article should be unique; otherwise, you can't reliably link to them, and bugs in the edit interface put you in the wrong subsection after you finish editing. - Dank (push to talk) 15:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "en route": "en route". Some write it with italics, but I can't find support for that in the usual dictionaries. - Dank (push to talk)
    • Funny you should mention that. There's been an open request over at the Guild of Copy Editors for someone to give this a look over, and one member gave it a quick once-over and italicized en route throughout. I think it has something to do with it being of French origin, but it's a common enough word and we don't go around italicizing Lieutenant, eh? I don't care either way, just find it vaguely amusing. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?) 18:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Good dictionaries (Merriam-Webster and Webster's New World Collegiate enjoy wide support in the US) are generally good for answering questions about words, although this particular question is frustrating because neither dictionary will italicize the term in the main entry on the term. Sometimes the trick is to find another entry that mentions the term you want to check. I found "en route" non-italicized in the "travelling" entry of the thesaurus section of my CD-ROM WNW. - Dank (push to talk) 18:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Reno, Nevada": "Reno, Nevada,". Please see WP:MHCL#commas or User:Dank/MIL#commas. - Dank (push to talk)
  • "Seattle-Tacoma International Airport": "Seattle–Tacoma International Airport". Note that the article title uses the en-dash rather than the hyphen. A lot has been said about en-dashes vs. hyphens ... the bottom line is, no one cares except for just a few folks, those folks want to see an en-dash here, and it probably won't get through FAC with the hyphen. Chicago does give some support for an en-dash here, but doesn't support all the en-dashes that WP:DASH asks for. - Dank (push to talk) 15:10, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "livery": I linked it to livery. - Dank (push to talk)
    • The link you just substituted is better than mine. - Dank (push to talk) 20:01, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The ... aircraft was operated by Hughes Airwest, and had accumulated 5,542 airframe hours since entering service in 1969. ¶ The aircraft was operating under the livery and name of Air West, the airline that had been recently purchased by Howard Hughes and rebranded Hughes Air West. While the flight's official name was Hughes Airwest Flight 706, it also did business as Air West Flight 706.": "The ... aircraft had accumulated 5,542 airframe hours since entering service in 1969. The aircraft was operating under the livery and name of Air West, the airline that had been recently purchased by Howard Hughes and rebranded Hughes Airwest." See WP:MHCL#repetition. - Dank (push to talk) 19:17, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Consistency is needed on "US" vs. "U.S.". Chicago recommended "U.S." in the previous edition but now recommends "US", FWIW. - Dank (push to talk)
  • "F-4B-18-MC Phantom II, Bureau Number (BuNo) 151458, coded '458'": I left this alone, but I'm wondering how many readers will have a burning desire to know the Bureau Number, the acronym for the Bureau Number, and the shortened form of the Bureau Number, but would be too lazy to click on a link to that plane that would give details like that. What's the most common way that, say, newspapers would refer to this model? - Dank (push to talk) 19:58, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Contemporary newspapers generally referred to the jet as "the Marine fighter" or "F-4 jet" or "F-4 Phantom" or something of that nature. The official NTSB Aviation Accident Report, however, consistently referred to it as BuNo458, so I stuck to calling it BuNo458 throughout the article. I don't know of any other way to introduce that information however. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?) 20:04, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Okay I misunderstood. Was that bureau number assigned by the NTSB? - Dank (push to talk) 20:07, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • No from what I understood it was assigned by the military. That was just the way the NTSB decided to refer to that particular aircraft in their report. And seeing how it was the official accident report, I figured I should probably follow that style of reference. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?) 20:10, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • I'll think about this while I'm shopping. I'll be back in an hour, in case you want to work on the article without edit-conflicting. - Dank (push to talk) 20:47, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • WP:COMMONNAME isn't decisive (because we're not talking about an article title), but it's relevant. I would prefer "the Phantom" and "the military jet" for one, and "the DC-9" and "the Airwest jet" for the other, but I'll wait and see if anyone else has a preference. - Dank (push to talk) 04:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "At the time of the accident, VFR procedures included a "see and be seen" doctrine that dated back to early aviation. The "see and be seen" formula required pilots of all planes, VFR and otherwise, to be on constant lookout for all aircraft flying in their vicinity, regardless of navigational aids.": I didn't make the edit because there are judgment calls here, but this should be shorter.
  • "While near": "near".
  • "the aircraft impacted from the mountain.": This appears to be repetitive (see WP:MHCL#repetition), since you mention collisions with mountains for both planes in other sentences. I didn't make the edit. - Dank (push to talk) 14:59, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, the word "from" shouldn't be there. But that part was referring to the witness statements. Witnesses reported that they heard/saw two explosions -- one when the two planes collided in the air, and the other when the DC-9 hit the ground. But yes, that paragraph is something of a jumble, I'll see what I can do about cleaning it up when I get back from class. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?) 15:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first time we're told about witnesses is in Hughes_Airwest_Flight_706#Collision: "Witnesses in nearby Duarte described hearing a loud noise and seeing two flaming objects falling from the sky." The next section says "News reports indicated that these bodies had apparently been thrown clear on impact." The readers should have a mental picture at this point that what we know about the crash comes from very distant witnesses and from reconstructions. But then we find out: "Some eyewitnesses reported that F-4B's left wing impacted the center of the airliner's fuselage immediately after performing a barrel roll. Other witnesses claimed that the F-4B ripped a large hole in the fuselage of the DC-9, through which papers and luggage streamed as the crippled airliner fell." This gives the opposite impression, that people watched details of the event and reported what they saw. It's best to establish one of these two frames of reference early in the article, and then parts of the story don't mesh with that viewpoint, make it clear that they don't mesh.
  • "a form of primitive flight data recorder": "a primitive flight data recorder"
  • "Thursday, June 10, 1971 and sent to Washington, D.C.": "Thursday, June 10, 1971, and sent to Washington D.C.". See WP:MHCL#commas.
  • The second paragraph of Hughes_Airwest_Flight_706#Survivability could say the same thing with fewer words. IMO there's more detail on the electronics than most readers want. Also check for agreement of subject and verb throughout the paragraph.
  • {{cquote}} has met resistance at FAC and isn't supported by Chicago. Indenting a block quote is sufficient.
  • "During the course of the accident investigation": "During the accident investigation" is safer at FAC, although I think it's a judgment call, since "the course" reminds the reader in just two words that the investigation was lengthy.
  • "The NTSB report included a total of three recommendations for the FAA. These recommendations included: [3 recommendations] Additionally, the NTSB strongly recommended ...": See WP:MHCL#repetition and WP:MHCL#clarity. I didn't make the edit.
  • "These recommendations included: the installation of ...; provide air traffic ...": See WP:MHCL#series.
  • "contemporary media": media. "contemporary" is common in scholarly history articles, but for a general readership, it has two contradictory meanings, so it's best to avoid the word.
  • "The FAA refuted these findings": "refuted" expresses the POV that the FAA was right and the NTSB was wrong; was that what you meant?
  • "inflight": "in-flight" per WNW, unless you have a dictionary that writes it as one word.
  • "a joint statement asking the FAA ... Other demands": Were they demanding or asking? Also, there's a comma after a ref number, and the series is nonparallel.
  • "filed lawsuit": "filed a lawsuit". "filed suit" would also be okay.
  • "all other 72 actions": "all 72 actions" - Dank (push to talk) 17:51, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll have another look after you've had a chance to fix things. Feel free to submit more articles to A-class review, but we prefer that articles comply with our checklist before they're submitted. - Dank (push to talk) 18:15, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mukk, I just got a note on my talk page: "I don't know if you are aware but the article is on the GOCE requests page". Are you still looking for copyeditors from the GOCE? - Dank (push to talk) 00:43, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note: I see no edits to the article by the nominator since I made these requests. - Dank (push to talk) 16:27, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments: I haven't had any experience reviewing aircraft articles, so I can't really focus on content, sorry. Just a couple of comments from me:
    • no dabs, ext links work, alt text is present;
    • in the Probable cause section, "Lt. Schiess, the radar intercept officer". Previously you have, "Lt. Schiess, the Radar Intercept Officer". Thus the capitalisation should be consistent;
    • in the Aftermath section, "US Military" - I think this is incorrectly capitalised. I think it should just be "US military" as it is an improper noun;
    • in the Aftermath section, there is a reference before a comma ("radar screens[4],"), per WP:PAIC it should be after;
    • in the Aftermath section, I think there is a word missing here: "with the Los Angeles and New York noted as being..." I think it should be "with the Los Angeles and New York routes noted as being";
    • Citations # 28 and 35 probably need full stops for consistency with the other citations. AustralianRupert (talk) 04:00, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Is anyone in a position to respond to those comments? This review is due to be closed in about four days and currently it does not have the required level of support to be promoted. If these comments can be addressed, I will take another look at the article to see whether I can support its promotion. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Oppose: unfortunately the 28 day time limit for this review has past and my concerns have not been addressed. I have listed the review for closing by an uninvolved co-ord. You are welcome to renominate at a later date (no minimum time frame) when you feel you have addressed any outstanding issues in this review. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:06, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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