Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New York Air Route Traffic Control Center


 * 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 delete. I remind colleagues that WP:V, which directs that contested unsourced material must be removed, is core policy and can not be overridden by local consensus. This article has been unsourced since creation in 2006 and remains so after 12 years, and 3 weeks of AfD. In this case, core policy dictates that AfD is cleanup. The article can be userfied for improvement, and recreated once it is adequately sourced.  Sandstein  20:57, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

New York Air Route Traffic Control Center

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I'm sure this nomination is going to be controversial, but here goes.

Totally unreferenced since it was created in 2006. Tagged for no references in 2007. Tagged again for no sources in 2015. Still has no sources.

There's no doubt NY Center exists. There's no doubt that Air Traffic Control, in general, is notable. There's no doubt that the ARTCC system, in general, is notable. But an individual center? No.

All of the US ARTCCs have similar articles. All with similar problems. But let's start with this one.

Most of the material in this article is just plain aviation cruft. The details of sectors, sector names, frequencies, etc. Some of that you can compile from the standard aviation charts (frequencies, sector boundaries). Some of it (sector names), I don't have any clue where to find. Presumably some internal FAA document, so WP:PRIMARY. But, in any case, none of this is sourced and even if it was, it's pure trivia.

For background, I'm a pilot (although I haven't flown in years). When I was flying, I was in the New York Area. So I have some basic understanding of how all this works.

I did a bunch of searching to see what I could find. If you want to repeat that experiment, be aware that you'll find lots of stuff. But, be careful about discerning what's a WP:RS and what's not. There's a highly organized universe of aviation gamers out there, who have built a lot of websites with this kind of data. One of them, I had to read very carefully to figure out that I was looking at one of the gaming sites, and not an official FAA site. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:58, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. Sheldybett (talk) 02:09, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Aviation-related deletion discussions. Sheldybett (talk) 02:09, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Sheldybett (talk) 02:09, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. Sheldybett (talk) 02:09, 28 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete not independently notable --DannyS712 (talk) 08:01, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep and reduce it's notable enough, and the article contains information that isn't in, and wouldn't be appropriate for, ARTCC. Just whittle it down to information that might interest the general public, or which doesn't belong on a chart or in a phone book. --Moralis (talk) 08:12, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you be more specific about which information that would be? And WP:RS for it?  -- RoySmith (talk) 14:22, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * User:Moralis/sandbox currently has a really lazy example of what it might look like. No real effort put in, it'd obviously have to be done with more care than this =P --Moralis (talk) 00:27, 29 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. As always at AfD, criticism of the current state of the article is responded to with AfD is not WP:CLEANUP. I can readily find sources with non-trivial coverage;
 * McCartin, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America here, here, and here
 * Thomas, Tree House to Palm Trees, admittedly, a personal reminiscence, but still reliable with usable facts.
 * Adequacies of the Air Traffic Control Systems in the New York City Area, primary, but usable once notability is established with other sources.
 * Aviation Weekly reporting on automation of the Center in 1958.
 * Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies, has a lengthy description of the part the Center played in 9/11
 * There are many scholarly sources that have coverage, I don't have time to list them all, here's one,


 * Williamson, "Software safety and reliability" has a lot of details on software outages at the Center.
 * I also note that searches using the Centre's abbreviation "New York Center" turn up a lot more results, although it is necessary to add "aviation" or "aircraft" or somesuch to filter out the irrelevant ones. SpinningSpark 14:24, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The McCartin book certainly mentions NY Center, but only in passing, as examples of ATC procedures which happened in any radar room of the era, or of events that just happened to have occurred in New York. It would be an excellent reference for an article about PATCO, but not to establish WP:N for NY Center.  The same comments go for the other sources you cited.  They're fine to establish specific facts, but don't do anything for WP:GNG.  Everything is either WP:PRIMARY, or generic to ATC overall, and not specifically about NY Center, even if it's mentioned as an example.
 * You are certainly correct that "New York Center" is what everybody in their right mind calls it, and thus makes a better search term. I've added additional template:find sources lines to help people in their searching.  It will still help to tweak those searches with additional terms, but I'll leave that up to others to explore as they may. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:43, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Needs assesment of the sources posted in AfD.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jovanmilic97 (talk) 10:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep in line with SpinningSpark's comments above. I think this is a borderline case, but we should err in favor of inclusion rather than exclusion. Sekicho (talk) 16:31, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Randykitty (talk) 16:02, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete this is unreferenced aviation cruft, completely unreferenced, and likely containing a lot of original research. I'm not convinced by the sources shown above, which appears to confuse air traffic control with this specific traffic control center. SportingFlyer  talk  22:37, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment, Delete or Rewrite I'm in Australia. "New York air traffic control" is what I think of in the context of incidents like Flight 1549, 9/11, etc - and indeed, I find results searching for that phrase, suggesting that it's a notable topic. It turns out, though, that there is more than one air traffic control centre in New York, and often news stories don't say which one was involved, eg . This one does say which one; this one  probably refers to the one this article is about, this one definitely does  .... (I realise that these are probably not SIGCOV, as the focus of the articles is on the incidents which occurred or might have occurred, or perhaps on (mis)communication within air traffic control, the effect of power cuts on air traffic control.) From my perspective, it seems that an article about 'New York air traffic control' would be useful, as in, it's something that people outside aviation would be likely to want to find out more about in an encyclopaedia, with information such as that there is more than one NR air traffic control centre; the amount of traffic they control; notable incidents in which they have been involved, etc. The intro and Section 1 of the current article could form part of such an article. I must admit that I have not searched for the terms in the rest of this article, but I highly doubt that they would be notable outside aviation. I would not vote to keep the article as it is - it should either be deleted or thoroughly revised and renamed. RebeccaGreen (talk) 17:39, 13 December 2018 (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.