Talk:Continental Airlines Flight 1883

Too Late to request deletion
I just now ran across this one. Not notable IMHO, but it has been here too long, so assume too many would disagree. There have been a host of both takeoffs and landings on the taxiways, as well as landing on wrong runways and even wrong airports, over the years by various major airlines. Rarely, has it resulted in damage or injuries and only when it does, would I deem it notable. Just because some local news reporter finds out about it, so that press media all over hear about it and expand on the incident, does not per se make it notable. Just a fluke of press coverage, which amounts to a flash-in-the-pan, which is quickly forgotten. EditorASC (talk) 03:19, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * These points were raised here. The distinctive parts of this incident compared to others were that new safety rules were created because of it, it was (effectively) a night taxiway landing by an airliner (which is very rare), and also it is the only known incident of its kind where the landing aircraft passed structures at high speed during its landing roll, i.e. the taxiway was close to buildings. You may also be interested reading this special sub-page, which was created specifically to explain why this article meets the WP:AIRCRASH notability threshold. Crum375 (talk) 03:49, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You can always nominate it for deletion and see what happens. Spikydan1 (talk) 04:02, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I would agree that it is rare, in comparison to total aircraft movements, day in and day out. However, the AP article declaring that it is rare because "experts say," is totally worthless.  Many of them do not get reported in the press at all and even the NTSB incident reports have only a smattering of what goes on over the years.  I have tried to look up ones that I knew about, and most of them don't show up in a search of those files.  I personally know of a DC-10 that landed mostly off the runway, in the mud and dirt at the new Denver airport in fog.  They only know about it because they found the tracks several days later, along with some squessed runway edge lights.  They were never able to pin down who did it.  In another case at the old Stapleton Airport, one flight landed on the taxiway for 26R.  Another airliner took off from the taxiway for runway 35, at old Stapleton.  A DC-8 landed on the taxiway for 28R at SFO (the sun was in his eyes, as he flew across the bay from Oakland).  I know of many others, including landing on wrong runways and even wrong airports.  ATC controllers themselves will try to cover it up, if they think they might be faulted.  That happened to me after I filed a report of a near mid-air while on final approach to LAX.  Both the company and the FAA just sat on it until the audio and radar tapes were destroyed (they re-use them in about two weeks time), and then said they couldn't investigate because the tapes had been destroyed.


 * It may be "rare," but it happens a lot more often than any AP reporter knows, because he has asked some "experts." EditorASC (talk) 11:33, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Associated Press, like us, relies on sources: "Russ Halleran, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union at the Newark airport, said he could not remember a jet landing on a taxiway in his 18 years as an air traffic controller." If someone thinks AP and Halleran are wrong and it's not a rare event, they'd have to come up with a source refuting them. Also, as I noted in the AfD, here is the NTSB database. Can you find one incident (not accident), involving a part 121 major carrier passenger jet airliner which: a. was fully investigated by the NTSB; b. has a "Post-Incident Safety Changes" section; c. resulted in one or more new published procedure(s) for the use by all pilots (e.g. new arrival procedures at a major airport); and d. resulted in new operating procedures at a major airport (e.g. runway/taxiway differential lighting settings)? Crum375 (talk) 12:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You have totally ignored what I said. I don't need to be told that the AP relies on sources.  that statement is condescending and frankly, an insult.  I don't give a damn if one controller hasn't heard of it happening in 18 years.  That proves absolutely nothing. How many other controllers and pilots are there?  Until you have asked them all, what AP and one controller has said, counts for absolutely nothing.


 * Try reading what I actually said, and quit giving me straw man responses to arguments I never made. EditorASC (talk) 12:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * If you read the above, you'll note that Halleran is not just "one controller", he's president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union. That should give him a bit more perspective, I would think. And I did read your message above, but instead of relying on reliable sources, your post is based on personal knowledge and assumptions. If this is not rare, there must be proof in the form of reliable sources refuting AP and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association president who say it is. Alternatively, there could be proof by pointing to actual air carrier incidents of the same type in the NTSB database. Crum375 (talk) 12:33, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

As long as you want to play the personal knowledge game, then your "That should give him a bit more perspective, I would think." comment amounts to blatant expression of alleged personal knowledge. God forbid!!

In case you have not noticed, this is a TALK page. It is entirely appropriate to discuss here what may or may not be a WP:RS, in a given circumstance, and why or why not. There is no way to make any intelligent statements about who, what and why an alleged source is reliable or not, without getting into one's own personal knowledge, experience and opinion. I never suggested that my opinions about the worthlessness of the AP source should be posted in the article itself, which is where the WP:RS rule applies. Nor did I say I intended to seek deletion of this article. That has already been attempted and it did not succeed. I simply stated why I think articles like this are not really notable. So, you disagree. What else is new?

What really seems to grate you, is that I don't have a Slobbering Love Affair (that is a title of a very good book) attitude towards well-known media sources, when they make statements that are either inaccurate or utterly worthless. So, the guy is a big union boss. That means he is omniscient and his ethics are impeccable? That means he would throw his own dues-paying members under the bus, if he knew about cases of ATC employees screwing up and causing a very dangerous situation and then working to cover it up? Hey, if you believe that union bosses have truth and integrity at the very top of their hierarchy values list, then I have a swamp in Florida to sell...

As for the AP being a reliable source, that news organization has been caught many times substituting its own personal agenda editorial opinions, and reporting such as if it was actually an objective account of the "news." In other words, while they may get the story correct on some occasions, they also tend to engage in deliberately deceptive agenda reporting in other cases. And, that observation does not even take into account the tendency of major news organizations to deliberately sensationalize their lead banners and even entire articles, as a way to keep and gain market share over their competitors. There are some good studies on that issue of press sensationalism. One is briefly summarized at | media coverage. That sad state of affairs about major news media sources requires us as Wiki editors to do the homework and find out when an alleged reliable source is actually a reliable source, in regards to a specific news story.

We need, for instance, to learn to reject a particular well-known source, when that source makes completely erroneous statements as to factual history (who was the first female commercial airline pilot to die in an accident in the United States, as one example). We also should eschew injecting personal sensationalism into Wiki articles (like inserting a word like "explosion," when in fact there was no explosion). We need to always be willing to analyze all alleged reliable sources, on the basis of what they say about specific bits of news, and not merely on the basis that they are a major, well-known part of the media. In other words, our attitude about major media should never take the form of obsequious slobbering, just because they are major media. Media reporters on all levels are notoriously ignorant about aviation accident issues and that tends to increase the odds that their reporting will be inaccurate, even when the individual reporter has all the best intentions and integrity. The ignorant and false statements made in many of the initial major media articles, about the crash of UAL 585, are a perfect example of what I am talking about.

Again, read what I actually said. I acknowledged that such incidents tend to be rare. But as to "how rare," I challenged the basis for the AP statements about that issue and pointed out their resorting to the logical fallacy of | ad verecundiam in trying to convey how rare such incidents really are. Not only did they try to base their conclusion (about rarity) on the opinion of one "expert," but the expert they chose was very deficient in his knowledge about how pilots see runways at nightas one example of their failure to do any in-depth research on the issue. Choosing a union boss to be your authoritative source, when there is likely to be conflict between pilots and ATC employees, as part of the substance of the issue being reported upon, demonstrates a rather lazy approach on the part of the reporter. The article was one of the "quickie" kind, where the reporter calls various "experts" to get their opinions, and then reports the story as if the AP reporter's conclusion from those opinions, amounts to a statement of historical fact. In essence, AP argued that no black swans exist because their selected "expert" said he had never seen anything but white swans. That made it obvious to me that their union boss "expert" was notable because of what he did not know, not because of what he did know.

There was one statement in the AP article that I found to make sense:


 * "Accurate statistics on taxiway landings are elusive, according to Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters, possibly because they occur so infrequently." EditorASC (talk) 21:49, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Simple question: can you point to any documented incident of an air carrier taxiway landing which resulted in changes in safety procedures (differential lighting policy and two new approach procedures in this case) at a major airport? Here is the NTSB database, which you can use in conjunction with Google. Of course this is focused on the U.S., but that will do as starting point. While you are at it, try to find a night air carrier taxiway landing, which is claimed to be even more rare. This one was not technically FAA-defined "night", but was effectively night due to the cloud layer and late dusk conditions. Crum375 (talk) 20:10, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * How ironic that you do exactly what you have accused others of doing: Ignoring what I said. The NTSB data base for accidents/incidents is far, far from complete.  There have been many incidents and even accidents, that cannot be found by searching it.  Gear collapse on landing?  I tried to find all of those once, and most of the ones I knew about, were not in there.  Your continued argument that the sources you want to rely on, are some sort of omniscient source of all things, is simply an absurd argument. You want to assume that incidents are never covered up, by both pilots and ATC persons, when they see that they can save their asses by doing so. Such things do happen, but of course it is impossible to document, simply because they have been covered up.  There are other reasons why the data base is far from complete, all the way from deficient software, to lost records, before the database was created, and on and on.


 * Discussion with you is as futile as beating a dead horse. You have amply demonstrated that futility before, when you kept insisting that the UAL 585 FO was the first woman commercial pilot killed in the US, DESPITE SOLID FACTUAL evidence to the contrary.  I already know I cannot expect you to listen to reason, so why bother? If it makes you happy to believe there are no black swans, because they cannot be found in your usual arbitrary sources, then be my guest.  I don't need you to tell me about any sources at all, since I have been researching and writing on airliner accidents for over 35 years now. EditorASC (talk) 02:32, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding black swans, if we had a reliable source telling us they don't exist, and no sources telling us otherwise, except for an anonymous Wikipedia editor vehemently insisting they do exist, but their existence is covered up by the powers that be, per his personal knowledge, I think WP:V and WP:NOR would keep those black swans off our pages. And regarding that UAL pilot, as I recall it, she was the first air carrier jet pilot to die on duty, while the previous one was a turboprop commuter pilot, which was mentioned in the accompanying footnote for clarification. I am not sure what your issue is with that, nor how it relates to this case, where you seem to believe that your personal knowledge trumps reliable sources. Crum375 (talk) 02:58, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Image date
As with most infobox images, I have the registration, the type of aircraft and the month and year on when it was taken. I believe it should be kept as knowing when it was taken allows users to compare the image to the wreckage. OrbitalEnd48401 (talk) 20:38, 13 April 2019 (UTC)