Talk:Western Airplane King Bird

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Notability[edit]

Article appears to WP:FAILN after good faith efforts to find additional reliable sources. The two sources in the article are far short of significant coverage (and certainly don’t indicate WP:LASTING notability); one is a brief paragraph description of aircraft specifications on a long list of early aircraft, the other a half-page of coverage in a 300+ page monthly digest. The only other mentions of this I find in notable periodicals are brief text advertisements buried in the back of a few issues of Popular Mechanics magazine, even those only taking up a tiny portion of the page.

This appears to be a one-off aircraft prototype that didn’t sell, and wasn’t notable in any meaningful way. It was just part of a flood of similar aircraft models, and one that apparently failed without much consequence to society. Even the monthly Aero Digest entry has a full-page ad for a confusingly similar "Air-King" directly across from it. Before this goes to AfD, I wanted to ask if anyone else might have better luck establishing notability. Shelbystripes (talk) 16:57, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Aircraft project consensus is that any aircraft that has flown is notable enough for an article. MilborneOne (talk) 09:39, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is one of the things about this project that confuses me. There seems to be a sense among quite a few editors that we shouldn’t overdo things, and some types of pages are aggressively proposed for deletion as soon as they appear, but ... this single aircraft built in the 1920s, that was offered commercially for sale but had no buyers, and faded away with no meaningful coverage in secondary sources, yet it automatically gets notability just because one flew before they gave up? We know it had no lasting notability. At least I do, I spent substantial time looking for actual evidence of lasting notability WP:BEFORE I commented here.

I’d agree that, for modern aircraft, some airplane that achieved type certification or even just flew an aircraft while pursuing type certification has done something notable. But this was the 1920s; it was a gold rush, and cranking out aircraft was a thing. Getting as far as a one-off prototype wasn’t really indicative of notability like it would be today because you didn’t have to worry about regulatory standards back then. In the U.S. there weren’t even type certificates issued until 1927! And applying for one wasn’t a requirement to sell an airplane! There were many new aircraft offers flooding the market at the time, including one-offs that never went anywhere and just failed. It’s been over 70 years, the one-off prototype isn’t even in a museum that I can find, there’s literally no WP:RS saying it has any kind of legacy or contribution or aviation at all. It’s easy in retrospect to look back and realize these ancient one-offs don’t meet WP:GNG. So why do we have an essay that gives them automatic notability? If I put an AfD on this, I suspect anyone not primed to defer to WP:NAIR would vote to delete it. Shelbystripes (talk) 01:17, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notable per MilborneOne, see also WP:NAIR. It could do with more citations though. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:19, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If there are no more WP:RS to cite, does that affect your opinion on notability? Because I tried to find more before I posted here, and it looks like there aren’t. And if you think more citations are needed and no one has any, doesn’t that mean that maybe this one isn’t notable? Shelbystripes (talk) 01:21, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone has a sub to Aviation Week it would be worth a search in the 1926-7 issues. Are there any other US aircraft mags that have accessible back-numbers in those years?TSRL (talk) 11:56, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]