Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide/Naming (Airports)

Consensus?

While no consensus on this topic has ever been achieved, through brute force there appears to be a de facto convention to use the longest "official" name possible, even when the results are so uncommon as to be ridiculous (eg. Dakar-Yoff-Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport, Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport and many more). I don't see an overriding reason to override WP:NC here. Is there one? Jpatokal 12:29, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Bumpity-bump. I was reminded of this when looking for Mont Tremblant's airport, only to find it under the monstrosity of a name called Rivière Rouge/Mont-Tremblant International Inc Airport, when even the official site calls it "Mont Tremblant International Airport". Surely somebody else has an opinion? Jpatokal (talk) 18:32, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The official name appears to be River Rouge - Mount Tremblant International Airport but the common name as used on the airport website is Mount Tremblant International Airport. I thought (although I could be corrected) that article names should use the common used name for persons or things. We should mention the official name in article intro and move the article to Mount Tremblant International Airport. MilborneOne (talk) 19:28, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Do bear in mind that this is Quebec, so the town is Mont-Tremblant and the official name as per [1] is "Rivière Rouge" (in French).

I'm more interested in the overall case though -- should all airports use the most common name, as opposed to the official one? Jpatokal (talk) 04:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I find this rather amusing that nobody bothered to include the official site, the alternate name and French version (done now), create the redirect or that in 2 years nobody moved it.

As to why some of these Canadian airports are at the particular names has to do with their creation. In 2005/2006 when I created them I was using the Canada Flight Supplement to give me the names, hence the Rivière Rouge/Mont-Tremblant International Inc Airport article. I had no idea what the common names were and figured that if there were other names then someone would assist in fixing it. However, in some cases this resulted in duplicate articles due to there not being redirects from the CFS name. As an example of this see Halifax/Shearwater Airport now a redirect to CFB Shearwater. By the way, the CFS always uses the "/" in names and not "-".

I do have a bit of a problem in putting airports at common name because it's not defined. Does it mean the common name as used in the area it serves or as used by people outside the area? That's assuming that people outside the area using a particular name are in the majority. Does using common name mean that London Heathrow Airport should be moved to Heathrow Airport? I think that a better way would to put airports at;

1 The name as used by the airport authority if available.

2 The name as used by the relevent government agency if available.

3 Common name as used in the area it serves.

CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 16:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I have to support CBWs list, I had used the term Common name to mean the name that the airport authority uses and appears on the signs and buildings put realise that it is not a clear term but my thinking aligns with the above list. MilborneOne (talk) 16:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me, and I'll even suggest a quick way of determining the "name used by the airport authority": it's the one given on the "About us" (or equivalent) page of the official website. Hence eg. "Heathrow Airport" (no London!) and "Singapore Changi Airport". Jpatokal (talk) 07:40, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The list may need to be refined a bit. If you look at the BAA site it indicates that Heathrow is "London Heathrow" but at the Heathrow site it's possible to read that as "Heathrow" or "BAA Heathrow". Note that Glasgow International Airport should then be at Glasgow Airport or "BAA Glasgow". Also Farnborough Airfield would need moving to TAG London Farnborough Airport. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 23:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Heathrow's official site is heathrowairport.com, not baa.com. The "Contact Us" page uses the form "Heathrow Airport". For avoidance of doubt, though, I'd suggest that we explicitly exclude any company names like "BAA", "TAG" — common name conventions still apply, and it's not like anybody ever speaks about going to "BAA Heathrow" or "TAG Farnborough". Jpatokal (talk) 00:54, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

That's what I ment about refining the list. Right now it says "The name as used by the airport authority if available." but should probably be something like, "The name as used by the airport authority, at the official web site for the airport, if available, and in such a way so as to comply with Wikipedia:Naming conventions." If you just say the "airport authority" then in cases like this it isn't too clear as to which official site is to be used. Then with a bit of luck the second part of the sentence would stop someone from moving East Midlands Airport to east midlands airport Nottingham • Leicester • Derby. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 01:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The airport's website seems a poor reference. These websites, and the airport's name on them, are controlled by their operators whose prime interests are commercial. A change of management and/or of commercial policy suffices to change the "published" name. Sometimes even justice has a word to say, as happened to German Weeze-Niederrhein (NRN) airport. An encyclopedia like Wikipedia should try to avoid commercial biasing; I therefore suggest greater importance for the name as used by the governing authority; this will very often correspond to the name found in the relevant AIP. Jan olieslagers (talk) 00:54, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Jan olieslagers, the relevant official aeronautical publications shall be used as reference. --CeruttiPaolo (talk) 22:09, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Airport or aerodrome?

The term "airport" is - to my most personal ears at least - a subcategory of the more generic "aerodrome". Also "aerodrome" is the term used in legalese, by the ICAO &c. Should not "aerodrome" be the prevailing term on wikipedia too, with airports being one of the subcategories? Other subcategories are military airbases, heliports, glider fields, French-called ULM-odromes, and likely more. Jan olieslagers (talk) 21:17, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you are basically right but the main problem is in North America where the term airport is used for what Europeans would call airfields or aerodromes. In Europe an aerodrome needs to be used for commercial traffic to be an airport but that does not appear to be the case in the USA hence the sometimes confusion. MilborneOne (talk) 21:23, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for going along; even so, excuse me for disagreeing...

1) I have some difficulty in accepting one country's non-conform language should be the deciding factor on the global wikipedia

2) but this isn't even the issue, there's many an aerodrome in the USA, check http://www.oldrhinebeck.org for just one example

3) as I understand, the USA and their FAA are in a process of streamlining their language and even their radio phraseology up to international (ICAO) standards.

Yours respectfully, Jan olieslagers (talk) 21:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Naming conventions

The proposed naming guidelines haven't been touched since first proposed in 2007. I think they need some attention, to concord better with WP:TITLE and WP:MOS. I might make an edit or two and see what people think. As for the airport mentioned above, why not do what books do and skip the prefix? Dicklyon (talk) 04:11, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation of airports by location

Another editor made the following addition to Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide/Naming (Airports) earlier this year:

4. If using a disambiguation title, follow Wikipedia:Article titles policy and use WP:NATURAL disambiguation where possible - if not, use comma-separated disambiguation over parentheses, using a higher-level administrative division such as Jackson County Airport, North Carolina.

I agree with using "natural disambiguation" (defined in Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation) where appropriate, such as for airports in Norway (see Førde Airport, Bringeland and Førde Airport, Øyrane). However, I disagree with using "comma-separated disambiguation" (also defined in Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation) for articles such as Jackson County Airport, North Carolina, since natural disambiguation does not apply and "higher-level administrative division" applies to place names (see Jackson County, North Carolina), not airports. Since there was no prior discussion about that addition, I am marking the second half of it as disputed and opening a discussion here. Note that we currently have over 600 airport articles disambiguated by location which use parentheses in the format "Airport Name (Location)". Interested editors may also want to review Talk:Enterprise Municipal Airport (Oregon)#Requested move 14 October 2013) which proposes moving Enterprise Municipal Airport (Oregon) to Enterprise Municipal Airport, Oregon. Thanks. -- Zyxw (talk) 19:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)