Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of aircraft operated by Virgin Australia


 * 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 no consensus. In three weeks we don't seem close to a consensus either way, and it seems unlikely that relisting again will change this. Michig (talk) 10:27, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

List of aircraft operated by Virgin Australia

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Contested PROD, my reason for the PROD was "Unnecessary content fork, all pertinent info presented here which isn't WP:OR is available in the main article". I have since removed most of the OR. This list serves no useful purpose. So far, Virgin Blue/ Virgin Australia has operated a total of five different types of aircraft, with four different models of the Boeing 737. All of the info regarding the current and former fleet types is in the main article in tabular and prose form; that article is not so large that a content split is justified and that article was not at all reduced following the creation of this list anyway. YSSYguy (talk) 05:16, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - What YSSYguy said. LK (talk) 06:47, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - Unnecessary content fork that duplicates existing information. It also presents it in a less concise manner, so is no improvement. - Ahunt (talk) 11:40, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge back into Virgin Australia any content that isn't already there. The airline's fleet by itself isn't an encyclopedic topic, see WP:IINFO. -- Hawaiian717 (talk) 00:08, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment apart from the info about the previous operators of the Boeing 737-300 that was used by the airline (which is irrelevant) and the fact that it was painted mostly white when all the other aircraft were painted red (which is of marginal interest and is probably WP:OR), everthing is already mentioned in the main article. I don't think there's anything to merge and, unless someone thinks that "List of aircraft operated by Virgin Australia" is a more viable search term than say, "Virgin Australia fleet", I don't think we need to keep this as a redirect either. YSSYguy (talk) 06:17, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:42, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Aviation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:42, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:42, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:42, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete they dont really have much of a fleet that needs information duplicating outside the main article. MilborneOne (talk) 11:37, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep This list is modelled on List of aircraft operated by Scandinavian Airlines, which has recently been made a featured list, and which includes wet leased aircraft.  There are several other similar lists/articles, created by various editors, and covering various types of airlines – see Category:Airline fleets and Category:Lists of aircraft by operator.  One of those airlines, Imperial Airways, flew for only 15 years; Virgin Australia has now been flying for more than 12 years.


 * Nearly three years ago, List of aircraft of Imperial Airways was nominated for merger, but that nomination was not successful. The rationales posted at Talk:Imperial Airways for not merging that list are also justifications for not deleting this list (ie this list in its present form, without the wet leased aircraft, which should all be put back into the list).  On the other hand, none of the alleged rationales for deletion mentioned above is consistent with the fact that List of aircraft operated by Scandinavian Airlines is a featured list, nor with the fact that similar lists are published on other websites, including commercial websites, and therefore obviously serve some useful purpose for the people who read them, including people who work in the aviation industry.  (Some encyclopedia readers are interested in the aircraft, but not in the other details of the airline.  That's one of the reasons why Wikipedia has many separate pages consisting solely of lists of things.)


 * In the case of this particular airline, the information in the Virgin Australia article about the airline's fleet (including its wet leased aircraft) is presented as an untidy and difficult to follow mixture of prose, table, list, and random photos of some of the airline's aircraft (including one of its wet leased aircraft). In fact, the entire Virgin Australia article in its present form is a bit of a dog's breakfast, not worthy of its subject matter; it also focuses mainly on the pre-Borghetti airline, and not on the airline as it is today.


 * In any case, a person wanting only to know about Virgin Blue's / Virgin Australia's fleet would be better served by a separate list of all of the airline's aircraft (ie owned, dry leased or wet leased), illustrated with one photo of each type, if such a photo is available on commons (that's what List of aircraft operated by Scandinavian Airlines does). The mere fact that Virgin Australia has not (yet) owned or dry leased many aircraft types is not to the point.  On the contrary, that fact is notable in itself, as is the fact that in the course of its relatively short life, the airline has been transformed from a single-aircraft-type Southwest-style airline into something very different.  If an airline notable enough to be included in Wikipedia has operated several different aircraft types, each of which is notable enough to have an article in Wikipedia, then that's reason enough to have an article listing all of the aircraft operated by that airline, particularly if some or all of those aircraft have left the airline's fleet, and/or if the airline's and/or its fleet strategy has radically changed.  Also, most articles in Wikipedia about airlines tabulate only the current or recent fleet of the airline, not retired aircraft.  That fact makes "all times" lists particularly useful.


 * The wet leased aircraft in List of aircraft operated by Scandinavian Airlines, and some of the other lists referred to above, were operate(d) under the lessee's flight numbers only, and the seats on those flights are/were not marketed by the lessor. The services are/were not code share services.  From the passenger's perspective, these services are/were therefore operated by the lessee.  If it is the industry's view that such services are nevertheless not really operated by the lessee at all (and I dispute both this view, and the view that this view is the industry's view, because wet leases are drafted by lawyers, who would be well aware that a contractual arrangement under which the owner would retain total control of the relevant asset would be a license, not a lease – see Street v Mountford), then, again, that fact in itself is notable enough to be mentioned in an appropriate list drawing a distinction between owned, dry leased and wet leased aircraft and including them all (which is what List of aircraft operated by Scandinavian Airlines does). Bahnfrend (talk) 14:15, 31 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Holy WP:TLDR, Batman. Also, be careful of the WP:OTHERSTUFF arguments. - The Bushranger One ping only 19:02, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * An "other stuff" argument is essentially an argument that an article should be kept because another article exists. My arguments are not really "other stuff" arguments.  Rather, my arguments include arguments that (1) this list should be kept because a similar list survived a merger discussion and the same reasons for retention apply to this list, and (2) there are two similar lists that have been made featured lists (List of aircraft operated by Braathens is also a featured list).  As WP:OTHERSTUFF indicates, arguments like these are valid arguments.  WP:OTHERSTUFF also says that "In categories of items with a finite number of entries where most are notable, it serves no useful purpose to endlessly argue over the notability of a minority of these items."  So, eg, if a List of aircraft operated by Qantas or List of aircraft operated by Air New Zealand would survive a deletion debate, it would serve no useful purpose to have a debate about whether List of aircraft operated by Virgin Australia should be deleted.  Also, if the editors who want this list to be deleted are serious in their claims that it shouldn't be in Wikipedia, they should nominate both of the similar featured lists for deletion or merger, and see what reaction they get to those nominations. Bahnfrend (talk) 22:35, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough - however your last sentence there is very much in the argument to avoid camp. WP:ALLORNOTHING. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:43, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:ATA links to WP:OUTCOMES. According to WP:OUTCOMES: "Lists are generally kept if they are limited in scope, are based upon concrete criteria for inclusion, have verifiable content, and have a logical reason for their construction." All of those points apply here.  (As the existing lists indicate, verification of information about what aircraft have been operated by a particular notable airline over the years is generally available in books, online versions of newspapers, and/or on reliable websites behind paywalls.) Bahnfrend (talk) 23:09, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think the list satisfies the last criterion "and have a logical reason for their construction", at least your argument that "this is in the same format as the lists for other airlines' fleets" is not a logical reason. The List of SAS aircraft has over 50 entries, the list for short-lived Imperial Airways has more than 30; this one would have 10 if the ATR-72 and F100 were to be included, or eight without them - of which four are different models of the one type. Comparing this list to them is a bit disingenuous IMO, as they represent considerable extra information not contained in the parent article, whereas nothing of this list is not in the parent article, except the info regarding the two F100s and the total numbers of each type operated, which is unencyclopaedic fanboy cruft that the fanboys can find on the (non-RS) ch-aviation et al. If the Virgin Australia article is a dog's breakfast and focussing too much on its history with Brett Godfrey running the show, then edit it; the solution is not to create a new list that does nothing to address your concerns regarding the parent article. YSSYguy (talk) 15:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep - per the eloquent responses from Bahnfrend. SatuSuro 15:20, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 03:42, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete The information is already in the parent article and there's no reason for a separate one. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 13:11, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Responses
 * To YSSYguy:
 * Nobody is suggesting that the other, similar, list articles should be deleted. As indicated above, it is pointless to argue about whether a list relating to a particular airline should be deleted from Wikipedia merely because that list is shorter than equivalent lists relating to other airlines.  The important point here is that this list concerns a notable airline that has operated more than 100 aircraft of at least eight distinct types made by at least four manufacturers.  The list should therefore be retained.
 * In that regard, it is misleading to suggest, as is suggested above, that there is no real difference between a 733 and a 73H. The two types have different length fuselages, different seating capacities, different exit configurations, different interiors, different flight decks, very different avionics, different wings, different engines, etc.  Most "fanboys" and airlines would already know all of that sort of thing.  For example, Virgin Australia removed the E170s from its fleet, but retained the E190s, because the former were different enough from the latter to be uneconomic to operate.  But most other people have difficulty telling even the difference between a Boeing and an Airbus, and are therefore likely to be enlightened by an "all time" table showing images, brief details, and links to other articles with further, encyclopedic, information about the various types, in chronological order.  The parent article does not include such a table, and there are no such tables in the "fanboy" websites.
 * Contrary to what is asserted above, this particular list does not include "fanboy cruft". A true example of an article with "fanboy cruft" is this article in French Wikipedia (which lists Air France's aircraft individually, with regos, exact dates of entry to and exit from the fleet, etc).  If you're looking for "fanboy cruft", it's in the parent article, eg the stuff about the Boeing customer codes.
 * To Presidentman:
 * The reason a separate article is appropriate is obvious. It is quite normal for English Wikipedia to have separate articles about the company that runs a public transport system (eg British Rail, Yarra Trams) and about the infrastructure of that system (eg List of British Rail classes (which is only a short list), Trams in Melbourne), because many readers are interested in only one of those two alternatives.  That's all that's being done here, and also in respect of Qantas (see Qantas and Qantas aircraft).
 * To both YSSYguy and Presidentman:
 * Much of the information in the parent article should be in the list article instead, eg, the detailed information about Virgin Blue's former policy of giving its aircraft silly names. The inclusion of such information in the parent article is one of the reasons why it is presently such a dog's breakfast; the parent article is supposed to be an article about an airline, not an article about aircraft, but at the moment it doesn't seem to know what it really is. (The British Rail article, by contrast, includes almost no information about British Rail's locomotives, and the Qantas article has information only about the current and future fleet.)  Contrary to some of the assertions above, the parent article also omits significant information about the Virgin Australia fleet, eg, the reason why the A330s were acquired (to operate services to and from Perth), and that the 777s are used only on international services.  However, I am not going to modify either of the Virgin Australia articles while there's still an ongoing debate about whether one of those articles should be deleted. Bahnfrend (talk) 17:28, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep We should try for a certain amount of consistency. That other very similar articles exist in Wikipedia is not a good argument; most of the time that argument is raised, either the others should also be deleted or the others are for much more important subjects. But when   other articles have been consistently accepted by the community at AfD, then I think it takes an argument why this one is different and less notable (or otherwise deficient), or an argument that consensus has changed. Judging by the comments, I don't think it has. We don't follow precedent in any strict sense, nor should we, but we should be informed by it.  DGG ( talk ) 19:00, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 00:47, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I am in two minds about this. I think the airline is here to stay and in the future the number of aircraft used with be sufficient to justify an article as the information will be too much for the main article. That is not the case now. It is the case for the examples that this list is being compared with. So there is an argument to merge this list (i.e. make it a redirect, as there is little information to add to the main artcile), and maybe the redirect will be moved back to a list when the information in the main article gets too large. There is also an argument to say that this list should be left, as it is well written and will expand to contain more information than the main article does. I am also partly influenced by DGG's argument above, so I come down to a weak keep. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  04:44, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * 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.