Wikipedia talk:List of accidents and incidents on commercial aircraft/Guideline for inclusion criteria and format

MfD Result Notice
This page was the subject of an MfD discussion closed on 3 November 2007. The result was keep. Xoloz 15:08, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Please discuss the proposed guideline: Guideline for List of notable accidents and incidents on commercial aircraft inclusion criteria and format in this Talk page. Here is a link to the draft guideline under discussion.

Started proposal
This is my first draft version. Please feel free to comment and/or improve. Thanks, Crum375 15:58, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Question

 * "Each entry in this list must be linked to a specific corresponding Wikipedia article about the accident or incident being described; if there is no such article, write it first and then insert it in this list; if the article is deleted, its list entry will also be deleted"

I have a question about this statement. There are some incidents that are historicly notworthy, but don't have an article yet. Will they be removed until the article is made or can they just stay on the list and be linked to the article onece it is made. – Zntrip 16:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I specifically researched this issue, which I think is paramount for the proposed inclusion criterion. My understanding of the current generic WP List guideline is that an individual article per entry is recommended but not mandatory. I think that in order for the inclusion criterion to be easy to enforce in this article we must mandate an existing article and link. I would recommend for the editor who wants to add an important otherwise-eligible event to add it in the disussion page and describe it there, to the best of his/her ability. Then odds are someone will create the article, assuming that it is as notable as the original contributor says. The advantage of this rule (along with the others) is that it makes inclusion decisions very easy and will prevent a lot of unneeded and time wasting arguments. Crum375 17:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I have made changes in the proposed guideline to reflect our encouragement of adding an entry that has no WP article into the list article's Talk page. Crum375 21:20, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Village pump notice
I have posted a link to this proposed guideline, with a brief explanation, at the village pump. Crum375 02:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Concern and questions
Thanks for inviting me here!

I'm a bit concerned with what looks like a modern US Part 121 qualification for inclusion here. There have been quite a few notable accidents to commercial aircraft with a capacity of fewer than ten passengers. Nearly all, at least in the US, are pre-World War II - TWA Flight 599, for instance, which forced the US CAA to make aviation accident reports public, or the accident that killed US congressman Bronson Cutting and brought the CAA's numerous conflicts of interest into light (I'm currently researching this one, btw). Without these two accidents we might not have independent publicly accountable transportation safety boards in any country, let alone in the US, so I think they're notable. There are likely others that I haven't researched yet.

There have also been notable accidents to charter aircraft with a capacity of less than ten persons carrying notable individuals. I'm the last person to say that just because a celebrity was on board an aircraft, the accident itself was notable, but in some cases the status of the notable individual caused the aircraft to be treated as if it were the equivalent of a Part 121 flight in the country the accident occurred in. Are charter aircraft still considered "commercial aircraft" in this sense?

Perhaps the list should include any accident to a commercial aircraft that somehow prompted significant changes to the commercial aviation field. I also think that the passenger capacity criteria should be relaxed for accidents taking place before 1939.

It would also be nice to standardize wording for commercial aircraft without flight numbers. Not every airline used flight numbers - I wrote an article a few days back on an unnumbered Trans-Canada Airlines aircraft that lost a propeller in 1955. Although only one person died in that accident, it's been written up in two non-trivial air accident compilations because of it being the first incident of a propeller loss on a turbo-prop aircraft in commercial use. Apparently it was thought at the time that turboprops were virtually immune to propeller loss, even during overspeed situations. Oops.

I'd also like to see that Canadian Pacific bombing over Sault-aux-Couchons, QC referred to as something other than "Albert Guay". he was the bomber, but he wasn't the aircraft. -- Charlene 17:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi Charene, welcome to this discussion page. This proposed guideline is still just proposed, not in any way finalized or accepted by consensus, so feel free to suggest alternative criteria or wording. For the number of passengers, our concern is that we really don't want this article to become a database listing of every single accident. It will be too cluttered and uninteresting to read. Ideally it should represent the more interesting accidents that had some significant impact on society and aviation safety. Note also that other aviation accident lists exist; we would like to focus this one on the criteria of its title. For example, if some cargo plane loses an engine and manages to land safely, we would like to skip it if possible. Or if some celeb hires a private charter with a small entourage, unless it's extremely notable we'd like to skip it. The problem is that this article invites drive-by editors, who either try to insert the latest crash they read about in the paper or some other inappropriate item, and it takes constant effort to review and possibly reject the new items. In general the problems are described in the intro and rationale for the guideline. Anyway, feel free to suggest changes that address our concerns. Yes, the Knute Rockne crash was pivotal, so maybe there should be some special exception: say 8 seats prior to 1939, or special impact on aviation safety (like  formation of new CAB). And we do consider charter as commercial, as per our current definition. Anyway, feel free to modify the proposal, and thanks for all your good work so far. Crum375 17:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. The list doesn't need every recent accident in the NTSB database that killed more than two people (and some that didn't kill anyone and have no other notability), but it does need accidents that killed a significant number of people (30 is a good number) or were otherwise notable even though they weren't from the West or they took place before a certain date. Although by "notables" I wasn't thinking of the Paris Hilton type but more the Dag Hammarskjold or Rwandan President type. I think an accident to someone like that is always notable. -- Charlene 21:08, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree in general, but I think that 'notability' is more broad based. IOW, the US NTSB would assign more resources to a crash that includes a major celeb, simply because it has a higher public profile, i.e. political pressure. I assume it's the same in your parts and elsewhere. I think your point is that when a leader dies in a crash it affects "the course of history" or at least aviation safety, while when a celeb dies it's just hot news for the media, but I think it's not necessarily so. When a celeb dies, there is more focus placed on the crash and its causes compared to Mr. Joe Blow, for political reasons per above, and hence there could be aviation safety changes instituted, somewhat like when an important person has some rare illness and more focus and resources are then invested in that direction. In general though, I agree with you, and think this list is doomed to fatal bloat unless we can narrow it down drastically. Crum375 23:32, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I, too, would like to see the term "large" deleted. Notability doesn't necessarily depend on size of the aircraft. Some things to consider about notability in light of existing Wikipedia guidelines and in light of the commercial aviation industry:
 * - Notability is guaged by the existence of verifiable, non-trivial coverage of the incident. The exact phrase from Notability is: "In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough that it will be described by multiple independent reliable sources."
 * - From an industry perspective, an incident/accident will generally be notable - meaning that it will be written up in non-trivial sources - if one of several factors are present:
 * - The incident/accident leads to a change in procedures, regulations, aircraft design, etc.
 * - The incident/accident involved circumstances or factors that are highly unusual, or the combination of factors was unusual.
 * - The incident/accident involved an unusual aircraft, or was the first for a particular type of aircraft.
 * - The incident/accident involved the death of someone famous, either to the general public, or to the industry specifically.
 * - Another way of looking at notability: was the incident/accident significant enough to be remembered as a part of established aviation history (and not just remembered soley because of an article on Wikipedia!)?
 * These are just some thoughts, but it'd be nice to have a list like this to refer to when judging whether an incident/accident should be included. Akradecki 22:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with the goal of having only 'important' or 'ground breaking' or otherwise 'encyclopedic' cases. The problems I see are:
 * If you scan ASN DB, you'll note that the annual accident/incident density (and these are commercial cases only) is high enough, that it could quickly deluge this List, in its present form
 * If the inclusion criteria are overly complex, it will require a lot of thinking and possible disgreements per case, which will significantly increase our workload and discussion bandwidth per item
 * My suggestion is as follows: anyone who wants to modify the inclusion criteria from the proposed ones, please read the ASN DB list, year by year, and realize that WP recommends about 25-35KB per article, where we already have 92KB!
 * Given this situation, we obviously need to decide if this List can stay in its present form. I see 2 possibilities: keeping it in its present form, as a history/timeline of accidents from early on to today, but raising the inclusion bar significantly, so as to end up with the desired 30KB or so; or, splitting into several sub-articles, e.g. by decades.
 * My own inclination is the former: I like the concept of one timeline, from start to end, of the more important cases, vs. a DB/laundry-list type of article. But to achieve that we would need to seriously raise the entry bar. Comments? Crum375 00:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Here's another thought: this list is, in many ways, a duplication of the Years in Aviation lists. Almost all the information here is on each year article. Do we need it in both places? If this list is getting too long, maybe just include the really significant stuff, with a notation somewhere to see the Year lists? Akradecki 16:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I see several problems with that option:
 * The 'YiA' lists are generic to aviation, not to safety or accidents/incidents as here, diluting our message. For example they would include introduction of new aircraft models, av-business news, etc - far from our narrow focus.
 * The 'YiA' is broken up into years, giving someone interested in following the progession of aviation safety or accidents over the years (e.g. looking for trends or patterns) a very difficult job of scanning 70 articles (say) instead of just one here
 * The job of maintaining a broken-up list would be N times bigger, with N the number of sub-articles, as they would all have to be on our Watch List, all have their own Talk page, with discussions being duplicated all over the place and no central place to deal with issues.
 * Bottom line: I think most people who work on this List would prefer to maintain it as one comprehensive list article of brief items, in a timeline format, from the birth of commercial aviation to today. Given the size constraint, that would logically mean a high inclusion bar, refusing the less important events. But of course all view points are welcome. And of course having this List in this format would not preclude other versions, e.g. in the YiA format. Crum375 16:59, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * This guideline's looking good, but I'm not sure about the insistence on minimum sizes of aircraft. Thanks to the requirement for an article on each entry - which is good - we know that each accident or incident is notable. We don't need to then raise the bar any farther - Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. Also note that Article size explicitly excludes tables and lists from stylistic judgements of article size. Two people in an airtaxi may not be suitable for inclusion in the list, but that should be because it's non-notable; not because of some arbitrary number of seats - who knows, perhaps that crash sparked off new rules for airtaxis, making the crash notable. --Scott Wilson 18:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If you are saying that the maximum article size limit does not apply, that would be new to me. We are already at 100kb right now; my understanding is that due to some users' system and/or network access limitations this size is considered very bloated and slows down their access to the page. If there is some other applicable limit number we can use that you can point us to, that would be very much appreciated. The 'not paper' is not our issue here but max article size - everything else follows from that. Crum375 18:29, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not saying that article size isn't an issue, but bear in mind it is a purely technical issue; not a stylistic one. It's silly to exclude otherwise notable incidents from the article just because it's 'too big'. Splitting the article will probably have to happen anyway. --Scott Wilson 18:40, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think we discussed this elsewhere, but assuming for now we do want to keep the article as one single chronology of aviation accidents/incidents, and that we are very close to max permissible size already, it means we need to do some drastic pruning. The most logical pruning mechanism is by notability and 'significance', primarily (IMO) to aviation safety. This is basically what the guideline is about. If we split the article by decades or whatever, it becomes a different situation, and we lose the advantage of the single combined list of the most important accidents/incidents, which was the motivator of this article. Crum375 19:01, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, I can see the advantages of a single list, but we've already filtered it for notability by requiring a corresponding article. Wikipedia's main purpose is to act as a source of information - not to keep every article under 32KB; removing information because of some arbitrary rule like the number of seats on an aircraft goes against this. Nonetheless, is there some way to have the best of both worlds; split articles for those who want them, and one big one for those with the computer to handle it? Can we transclude the split articles into the main one, as happens with AfDs? --Scott Wilson 03:47, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

There are MANY important, in terms of aircraft development, piloting technique and regulatory development, accidents not on this list.

For example two accidents involving a UAL DC-7 and Capital Viscount and hot dog military pilots had at least as much to do with the development of air traffic control as the Grand Canyon UAL/TWA collision.

What is the intent of the people who created this list, and how many accidents do they mean to include?

Your average 'head up and locked' or only those which had significant effect on aviation history?

Should we consider any incident worthy of an incident or accident report, or are documented examples of incidents which did not result in an official report be considered? Mark Lincoln (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The inclusion criteria of this list are clearly defined in the guideline. The list includes all accidents and incidents which involve commercial aircraft which meet specified criteria. It would be good to do what you suggest or imply, to include only accidents which had a significant impact on aviation safety, but this list obviously isn't it. You could start a new list, for accidents and incidents which had a "significant impact on aviation safety", but the problem with it would be maintenance over time. You'll have drive-by editors showing up after every notable accident or incident, trying to insert the latest news, and it will require a constant effort to keep fluff out. It's hard enough with this list, where we have fairly clear-cut and rigid criteria, but if you use "significant impact on safety" as as a criterion, which is highly subjective and hard to define or predict, possibly WP:OR-ish, it will be even harder. Crum375 (talk) 00:47, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Care in assigning blame
In cases where terrorist and criminal acts bring down aircraft, it's probably not a good idea to mention the perpetrator/s unless they've confessed or have been convicted in a court of law. If the suspected perpetrator/s have to be mentioned, they should be called "alleged" to avoid POV problems. This is especially true with respect to living persons, where libel might be a problem.

I would say something in the policy like:

If the accident or incident (as defined in this policy) was the result of a criminal or terrorist act, it is not necessary to name the perpetrator/s in this synopsis. If you do so, and the perpetrator/s have neither confessed nor been convicted in a court of law, you must state that the perpetrator/s allegedly committed the offence, and it would be preferable to state exactly who is making the allegation.


 * Bad: Reportedly a bomb was placed on board by John Doe. This makes it sound as if John Doe has been convicted, but the fact that a bomb existed is in doubt.
 * Better: A bomb was placed on board, allegedly by John Doe. This makes it clear that authorities are certain it was a bomb, and allege John Doe did it.
 * Even Better: The RCMP alleged that the bomb was placed on board by John Doe. This says exactly *who* alleged the crime.
 * Best: The aircraft was brought down by a bomb. Leave the speculation in the flight's article.

If the perpetrators have confessed to the bombing or been convicted, this is not necessary.

Tell me what you think. -- Charlene 18:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Ideally and eventually, if the proposed guideline is accepted by consensus, the brief item in this list should be a very short summary of the corresponding WP article. Therefore, all WP rules that apply to the article would apply here. IOW, whatever is decided at the article level for liability/culpability, including the exact verbiage, should be replicated here, though shorter. If you are referring to my own recent doings, I admit to not reading the article(s), just doing janitorial copy/edit to convert the right format/style, so feel free to fix any factual errors or improper verbiage (which I just followed blindly while fixing the style/format). I know I should do research on everything I touch, and I often do, but I don't always have the time. Thanks, Crum375 23:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * My only concerns, and they're small, are libel and POV. If the list states definitively that a bombing was by Hezbollah and it turns out to have been by some group like the Tamil Tigers or by Sikh extremists, it runs the risk of misleading people. I suppose this policy would be better for the accident articles itself and not the list. Do we have a policy for notable accidents? -- Charlene 01:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * As I said, I think we should insist on article per entry. If we have an article, then all the normal WP rules apply, such as WP:BLP and in general WP:V and WP:RS. We should always stay on the safe side in making any kind of culpability or liability statements, and be extremely careful, relying only on court verdicts, final NTSB reports (or equivalents), etc. If there is no article, my own preference is to remove the List article, but if it has to stay then whatever entry is there must conform to WP policies, like a mini-article. This is a sticky situation, since right now we have no specific cited references whatsoever for the article-less entries, although we do cite ASN as a whole. If we were to start building in support references, we are better off doing it in an article, where there is no space limitation (we are well over the limit here). Anyway, if you find something you don't like, like an unsupported allegation or U.S.-centric POV, feel free to be bold and fix it. Crum375 02:45, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment
This page is very useful for making the list better and more standardized. However, it needn't be in Wikipedia namespace, as in general we do not make "guidelines" related to only a single page. I think it would be best if either (1) this page is broadened to include other pages, or (2) it is moved to the talk page of the List, or a subpage thereof. ( Radiant ) 12:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I started the page in the talk page of the List, various admins moved it here. Also, I asked for comments on the Village Pump about how to do it, and got very little help. Crum375 13:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * That might be telling - there isn't enough interest in the list of aircraft incidents to create an "official" guideline for it. That shouldn't stop you from improving the list, though. It is a good idea to add inclusion criteria to the list itself or its talk page. This page is simply more formal than is needed. You might try nominating the list as a "featured list" and see what feedback you get. ( Radiant ) 10:19, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree there is not enough interest; that is part of our problem. The people who do show up here are often drive-by editors who hear about some event and rush to insert it into WP, typically with disregard to formatting and inclusion rules. Overall there are big problems with this list, the most critical is that it cannot really survive longterm because if it were to include all currently allowed items, it would become way too big; it already is near 100kb. So we probably would need to make a hard decision about either breaking it up (e.g. into decades), drastically reduce the text per entry, or raise the inclusion bar dramatically. The ASN database, which has the more modern events, is a good predictor of sizes for these different options. Crum375 13:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Regarding your point about FLC, I did look at the various related featured lists, per Durova's suggestion at the time. There was nothing that was directly relevant, although it seems most try to fit into a table format, which has its advantages and disadvantages. In any case, it seems to me that we need to solve our essential mission issues, that I described above, before shooting for FLC. Crum375 13:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that since few people are interested in talking about this (despite your advertising) you are empowered to make the decision on your own. Be bold and make it a good list, or a number of smaller lists, as you say. ( Radiant ) 13:49, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the encouragement, and I do plan to take one of these steps, after consulting with the others (there are at least 2 'regulars' who do care and have participated in the discussions). My main problem is not boldness but time to do it ;^) Crum375 14:16, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Which lists?
Should this guideline apply to just List of notable accidents and incidents on commercial aircraft, or also to List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by location and List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by airline? Personally, I think it should apply to all. Akradecki 15:59, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think we can use this specific set of criteria, but perhaps a modified version can be used for each one. Crum375 21:43, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Consensus statements
As this is a proposed guideline, I went looking for where we can state our endorsement or disagreement of it, and found nothing, therefore am starting this section. I'll start it out....


 * Endorse - This is a well-written guideline, succinct, easy to understand and easy to follow. It could well serve as a model for other lists, as well. Akradecki 15:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Support - of course. Crum375 21:41, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Partial Support - Very much in favour of requiring all entries be notable by insisting on a link to an article. I Strongly oppose the arbitrary cutoffs of number of seats and cargo weight, which will only serve to reduce the number of entries for no particular reason; they are already notable. Would also like to see the forty word limit phrased a little less strictly; it should be a guideline; although a laudable ideal, there may be occasions when it would be necessary to exceed it. --Scott Wilson 19:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you propose a language you can accept that we can work on? Crum375 19:33, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The version I would like to see implemented is almost identical to the current version; it merely removes section four and all references to it, and rewords section 3.3 so that forty/sixty words are recommended, rather than absolute, maximum lengths - such a hidebound rule would likely end up being ignored anyway. Here's my suggested section 3.3:


 * Individual entries in this list should be restricted to about 40 words; if the entry describes an accident involving multiple aircraft then the maximum size may be increased to 60 words. The overall article size should be kept to a minimum so simpler events should use less words, to allow more complex ones more space.


 * What do you think? --Scott Wilson 17:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Requirements for cargo aircraft
You currently state that no incidents will be allowed for commercial aircraft regardless of size or circumstances. What, even this one? The only commercial aircraft ever to land in such condition? Especially considering the disasterous consequences of similar damage on Japan Airlines Flight 123 and United Airlines Flight 232? Or is the damage to the wing sufficiant to actaully call this an accident, rather than an incident? Or maybe just an extraordinary exception to the rule...? Blood red sandman 20:33, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
 * There are many lists on WP for aviation related accidents/incidents. This specific one is specifically intended for the larger types of commercial aircraft. We would like to exclude cases of a cargo aircraft landing with an engine problem (for instance). As it is we have way too many events to realistically handle in this type of list without exceeding the recommended size limits (we are already x4 bigger than recommended!). The problem with exceptions is that it's a slippery slope, and I think it's better to possibly miss a couple than to have a fuzzy inclusion criterion. Of course I am open to other ideas... Crum375 21:40, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the best comprimise here would be to change the Flight 232 entry to something like


 * July 19 – United Airlines Flight 232, a Douglas DC-10, suffered a complete hydraulics failure over Iowa. Despite the crew's attempts to control the aircraft using only the throttle, it crashed on the runway of Sioux City, Iowa, killing 111 of the 296 people on board. Flying an aircraft with this amount of damage has only ever been acheived once.

That would give people who find themselves particularly interested by the entry easy scope of how serious the problem on Flight 232 was and just how unusual the accident is (much as, to take an obvious if disproportionate example, the Tenerife disaster entry tells us this is the worst disaster in commercial aviation histroy) but saves us from creating a problematic new entry. Blood red sandman 22:49, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, that sounds good to me. Of course we'd have to fix it up to meet the other format requirements, like total length, tense and sentence structure (semicolons), but otherwise it seems OK. I must say though, to be perfectly frank, that I don't see a problem with mentioning the no-hydraulics landing precedent in the wiki-linked article only, as the typical readers here are not as keen about these issues as we may be, but I can live with it if you think it's very important (remember space is a critical premium in this article). Crum375 00:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Clarification is needed as as to whether or not a commercial cargo must be aboard at the time of the accident to meet the inclusion criterion. The wording is presently ambiguous. I'd suggest it's not a relevant criterion.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:40, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the current requirement "A civilian cargo aircraft carrying cargo for hire" is very clear &mdash; if the aircraft is not carrying cargo for hire, it is not includable. Crum375 (talk) 21:50, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The classification of air accidents presented in the main article (Aviation accidents and incidents) is clear: "airliner accidents" and "military aircraft accidents". Let's take a recent case: crash of cargo An-12 near Chelyabinsk (civil operations, technical flight with no cargo, 9 dead). Is it a notable accident? Yes, at least it's more notable than any with no fatalites. Could it be included in "military aircraft"? No. So we should include it in "airliner" category. Was it a commercial flight? Literally no, but as the flight was a part of commercial operation, the aircraft could be determined clearly as "commercial". So the abstence of cargo and/or passengers on board of commercial aircraft is not a criterion for excluding notable accidents from the list.--81.195.29.204 (talk) 22:46, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This list article is already well over budget in length. So clearly we need to further restrict the inclusion criteria, not broaden them. The current subject of this list is commercial flights &mdash; training flights, repositioning flights and other non revenue producing flights are not included. Crum375 (talk) 23:18, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
 * We are talking about criteria's explanation, not its restriction. All technical flights of commercial aircraft are generating revenue as its a part of commercial operation. For to perform the flight with cargo/passengers from A to B in case your plane is in C, you have to firstly move the plane to A. And unlike training and demonstration flights they are an integral part of commercial operation. And speaking about restriction, I would firstly propose to remove all accidents with no fatalities. If the article's length is a problem.--81.195.29.204 (talk) 00:02, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The explanation is that we view "commercial flight" in the strict sense of a flight that was producing revenue, by either carrying cargo for hire or paying passengers. Non-revenue flights are often necessary, for training, testing, repositioning, maintenance, etc., but are not "commercial flights" per se. In the US, and many other countries, the laws governing non-revenue flights are different from revenue flights, and they may be licensed and operated under more lenient rules for aircraft and crews. Therefore, mixing such flights with commercial flights would distort the results. As far as the suggestion to restrict this list to "no fatalities", that would eliminate "incidents" by definition, since the ICAO and NTSB consider a fatality an accident. Thus the title of the list would change, and in fact its essence would change fundamentally. If you feel that another list, with other inclusion criteria, is needed, you are welcome to start one, and if its criteria are logical, it may stick. Crum375 (talk) 00:14, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The present wording "A civilian cargo aircraft carrying cargo for hire" would be improved by the insertion of a clarifying term. Either "A civilian cargo aircraft while carrying cargo for hire" or "A civilian cargo aircraft permitted to carry cargo for hire" would be less ambiguous.  If we exclude technical flights of cargo aircraft, should we not also exclude technical flights of airliners?  Or should we retitle the list to "..on commercial flights"?LeadSongDog (talk) 03:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have added the word "while" to clarify, per your suggestion. Crum375 (talk) 03:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Possible splitting solution
As was discussed above, there are stylistic advantages to having the article available as one big list, but technical considerations make smaller articles desirable. After a bit of fiddling, I've come up with this mockup of a possible solution that provides both, meaning we wouldn't need to arbitrarily exclude smaller aircraft. It's loosely based on the AfD and BJAODN pages. It does need a little cleaning up, and the divisions were totally random on my part - 1975-1999 is still too big - and if we do use it, we'll probably need some sort of 'portal' with no lists on it that most articles will link to, which may be a bit of a sticky wicket. Nonetheless, it shows the basic mechanics of the idea. We can split into as many articles as we like, yet make the entire list available. As long as people use section editing (and they kind of have to) the changes will be reflected in the main article. Also note that external links and a header will be added only once at the top and bottom of any page.

So, what do people think. Tear it to bits, folks! --Scott Wilson 20:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * First off, I think it's pretty good and maybe I can live with it. The price we pay in not having a single unified page is returned in more breathing room. But I notice you removed the 'notable' from the title. I think that notability, and a corresponding wikilink to an existing WP article, is important as it will allow the reader to focus on the more important cases and reduce the clutter from the less important ones. Overall, though, I think it's a good move. I await more opinions. Crum375 20:16, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I removed the notable from the title purely to reduce the amount of typing I had to do; I'm all for the insistence on a link to an article; indeed, I suggested it much earlier on. The mockup is merely intended as a quick demonstration of the process by which the article could be split, and in no way should any of the details like that be considered an essential part of it. If we use it, it'll need to be carefully tweaked - for instance, we shouldn't be suggesting a hierarchy for the sub-articles, and the introduction paragraph will need tweaked so that people know what they're getting. --Scott Wilson 20:25, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * In that case I am in general support - let's see what others think. Crum375 20:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Temporary holding area
I revised the wording to encourage insertion of entries without an article to the temporary holding area. Please review/comment. Thanks, Crum375 23:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I also added a 'courtesy note', encouraging the remover of entries that appear otherwise eligible but lack an article to move it to the holding area. Review/comments invited. Crum375 02:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

It's official
This guideline is now in force, per agreement on main list Talk page. Crum375 04:12, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Definition of Incident presently includes LOS and Runway incursion
The NTSB definition is inclusive of Loss of separation and Runway incursions. While these are serious, it is questionable whether they individually should be notable except where there are lessons learned and applied. Runway incursions have been near or at the top of the NTSB Most Wanted Safety Improvements since 1990, during which time there have been over 100 fatalities so caused (these so became Accidents) but the rate of incidents in the US is averaging more than once a day by FAA statistics, twice a day by ICAO statistics.

The guideline should explicitly address the notability of LOS and Runway incursion. I would suggest that from an accident prevention POV, the specific aircraft or vehicle involved is irrelevant. The space is either under control or not. That said, I doubt anyone wants to create a specific article and list entry for every incursion globally, something much more restrictive is needed in our notability definition. Suggestions? LeadSongDog (talk) 18:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I would support to specifically exclude LOS and RI from this list. The list is way too big as it is, and there are lots of fatal accidents from non English speaking countries that are missing. At the same time, I would exclude any incident (i.e. occurrence with no loss of life) where no significant new safety issue was exposed. We really need to cut down on size, and this would help. Crum375 (talk) 05:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, to keep this list as trim as possible LOSs and RIs should be excluded. – Zntrip 20:24, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * What would others think about recommending that major LOS/RI occurrences be simply listed against the relevant airport article in lieu of here?LeadSongDog (talk) 19:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Bold links
Bold links are discouraged. Why use them in this article? 199.125.109.111 (talk) 05:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * See the main talk page for related discussion threads. The reason is that we mandate one dedicated linked WP article per item. But each item has multiple hyperlinks, so it's difficult for a reader to know which one has the dedicated article. With bolding, it becomes easy, because only one wiki-link is bolded, and that's the main article. Crum375 (talk) 07:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Governent operated
I added that a government-operated aircraft with a civilian crew is eligible for inclusion if it carries passengers and meets the passenger seating requirements. Crum375 (talk) 12:26, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion for restriction of includable incidents
This list article is getting to be very big (163,189 bytes currently), well over the recommended size limits. Here is one idea for keeping down the bloat: We already exclude cargo flight incidents of any kind (and have restriction on acceptable cargo accidents). My proposal is to restrict passenger flight incidents to only those which involve a significant new safety hazard. So this incident would be rejected, because a landing gear not locking into place is not a significant new safety hazard. Comments? Thoughts? Crum375 (talk) 00:00, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Why not use date ranges like the lists for military accidents: List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (pre-1950), List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1950–1974), List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1975–1999), List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (2000–present). --JD554 (talk) 14:21, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * We discussed this before, and one reason I like the current format is that it gives the reader a nice overview of all major commercial aviation accidents, from the beginning of time, by easily scrolling over and stopping at points of interest. I think we would lose that useful and interesting perspective if we broke them down into subpages. Also, a single page is easier to maintain. Crum375 (talk) 15:52, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Another possibility is to separate passenger and cargo aircraft, but by date is probably best. - BilCat (talk) 15:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * See my answer above. Accident causes are generally similar for cargo and passenger flights. Crum375 (talk) 15:52, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Another option is to be more compact with flights, airline and aircraft types. If we simply say B747-400 instead of Boeing 747-400 we save some bytes. Likewise TWA800 would be much more compact than Trans World Airlines Flight 800, and WP:Redirects are free. The case can be made that the list is in gross violation of WP:Overlinking at present, and these changes would certainly improve that.LeadSongDog come howl  16:50, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I would have no problem with tighter links, though it would be a monumental task to go through the existing article and fix all the links. But what you think about the proposal to tighten requirements for includable passenger flight incidents? Crum375 (talk) 17:25, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I am not sure that the guidelines needs changing the new entry above is not really notable and has been sent to AfD. We have guidelines that control the articles themselves with WP:AIRCRASH so i am not sure we need anything other than perhaps excluding non-fatal accidents. Not sure about abbreviating the aircraft types, not everybody will know what they should be but we could remove a lot of the links, I cant see any reason for linking to the airline and the aircraft accident which might save a few bytes as in most cases the accident article has to be piped to remove the already linked airline. I would probably suggest we dont really need to link to anything but the accident article as the user can find all the information in that article. MilborneOne (talk) 17:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Although I too would prefer to keep this list in one article, but the only feasible way of getting it under control is to do as JD554 proposed and have each decade of the list become its own article. Even if we cut down the type of incidents that are included or trim down the sentences, the list will be growing every year and down the road we'll have to deal with this problem again. So I feel like breaking up the list is both doable and sustainable for the long term. – Zntrip 20:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * If we were to do that, I would still want a more concise list of the more notable commercial accidents and incidents, one that could fit within a reasonably-sized article, because I think it would be an interesting read as a single monolithic page. So one possibility is to tighten the inclusion restrictions even more for the single page version, and perhaps loosen them for the multi-page. If I had a choice, however, I would opt for just limiting the includability criteria for this one. Crum375 (talk) 20:48, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Now why didn't I think of that? Of course that would mean verifying that the linked article has onward links to the type and operator, but in most cases it does. I'd have to oppose, however, the notion that survival excludes the accident. Some of the most interesting articles would be missed, i.e. US Air Flight 1549. At most that should constitute an argument for a content fork of the list to create List of fatal accidents on commercial aircraft, List of non-fatal accidents on commercial aircraft, and List of major incidents on commercial aircraft. I'd prefer not to go down that path as it would open the door to the near-endless debate over what constitutes a major incident. LeadSongDog come howl  20:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Lists of accidents per aircraft type
I note that this page is directed at the maintenance of one particular list. I've created a few lists covering accidents to a particular type of aircraft. Most of these don't have their own articles, although some of them should. Maybe we can put some blurb into the page to mention these sort of lists, which operate under different rules? Mjroots (talk) 10:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Reconsidering linking in this article
It seems to me this article's readability and usability would be much improved by a drastic reduction in the number of links. By design, this article is a chronological index into the specific WP articles about each incident, so what is the point of the convoluted double linking of the form Airline, Flight number, and the links to the aircraft type and the location? Anyone who wants more information about a specific incident can click on the main link and get it all there. The vast majority of the links here are superfluous; never likely to be used and just cluttering up the article, which would be much more usable if it were formatted like a disambiguation page. I propose just one link per incident, with a brief (link-free) description to allow the reader to decide whether to click the link for more detail. (Also the guidelines need to be updated to take account of the deprecation of date linking several years ago.)

Examples (based on the current guidelines examples)


 * July 9 – S7 Airlines Flight 778, an Airbus A310, crashes on landing in Irkutsk, Russia; 128 killed


 * March 23 – A TransAVIAexport Airlines Ilyushin Il-76 crashes - thought to have been shot down - in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing all 11 on board

Colonies Chris (talk) 14:21, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This might be a good idea, but I suspect few of the list's editors will have read the above suggestion. Most will visit this guideline only infrequently if at all even if you did advertise this at the list talkpage. It might be necessary to advertise at other pages too. LeadSongDog come howl!  17:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I made the same suggestion on the article's talk page a couple of weeks ago; there have been no comments. Where else should it be advertised? Colonies Chris (talk) 12:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Agree with the suggestion I have never understood why we link the airline then make a convoluted link with the flight number to remove the airline name. Doubt anybody would go from here to the airline as most would want the accident article. MilborneOne (talk) 17:26, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for inclusion criteria for pre-1921 aircraft
First three entries copied from talk:List of accidents and incidents on commercial aircraft. For aircraft types first manufactured before 1921, the criteria for inclusion shall be four passenger seats or more. The "in commercial service" criteria shall still apply. Mjroots (talk) 17:41, 16 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I have no objection to changing criteria but till a new consensus is agreed to then both the 1920 and the Junkers crash don't belong....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 18:19, 16 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Understood. Since we're talking about adjusting the list guidelines, shouldn't we move this discussion to the guideline talk page? --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 18:26, 16 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Maybe you want to ping or message Milborne, YSSYguy, Jetstreamer, editors who worked on these guidelines before, and any other editors who may want to chime in for their opinions. I'm working on my next ebook and busy (and don't want to accused of anything improper either) at the moment....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 19:15, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * - I'll post a message at WT:AV. Mjroots (talk) 19:20, 16 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I dont have a problem with the proposal, one comment would be that it may be hard to explain why we need a size limitation at certain date points. Perhaps we should just remove the size limitation but strengthen the commerical service aspect. Which commercial services or aircraft types are we trying to exclude? MilborneOne (talk) 20:29, 16 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, I think we're trying to avoid swamping the list with a myriad of minor events; the problem is that the standard for "minor" changes over time, due to the changes in air travel itself. We certainly want to avoid inadvertently excluding events that were significant in their time frame.


 * I think we're trying to avoid full coverage of airliner types that were relatively small for their era, or which were general-aviation types also pressed into service as airliners. We also want to avoid full coverage of smaller, less significant firms, like non-scheduled operators, charter services, or air taxi services, though I think we can include accidents with such services that have a relatively heavy death toll or impact. (Maybe people on the ground should be counted; to me the most significant aspect of the 1919 Wingfoot Express airship crash is that it fell onto a major bank building in the heart of Chicago, killing a number of people in the bank and injuring many more.)


 * I know I'm being rather vague, which is exactly what our guideline must not be, but I can't think of any specific number or type limits right now.


 * I do think the list should explain at the top that its contents have been limited to make it more useful, and what those limits are, so that readers will know its restrictions. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 23:57, 16 September 2017 (UTC)


 * CDH has it about right. Airliners have changed vastly in the past century. A light aircraft of today can seat more people that many of the earliest airliners. Hence the need to have a stepped lower limit to account for progress through the years. Mjroots (talk) 09:53, 17 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes I dont have a problem with it just that we need to have an explanation handy if the stepped approach gets challenged in a few years time. MilborneOne (talk) 10:04, 17 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I also posted a notice here for editors who might be interested in this discussion. If no one posts on this say by Wednesday (20 September), I feel then that we have a new consensus and the guidelines can be altered and the entries restored....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 22:44, 17 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I can see the rationale for a "stepped approach", but do we need just one step or more? - Ahunt (talk) 01:26, 18 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Do you mean "one additional step"? We already have one step ("prior to 1940"--I assume this refers to the event date); this would add another for aircraft manufactured before 1921. (It might be confusing to have one step be based on the manufacture date and the other based on the event date...) --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 02:51, 18 September 2017 (UTC)


 * We might need an additional step of 6 seats, we might not. This can be addressed if it becomes apparent it is needed. While were here, lets codify the steps as applying to aircraft types that first flew before the year in question. Mjroots (talk) 05:22, 18 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I take it that there's no need to worry about the list being bloated with accidents of small but long-lived types, because those accidents would have to be notable enough for their own articles in the first place in order to make the list? --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 06:17, 18 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I doubt that will be a problem. Many of the earliest airliners were built of wood and fabric, and had short lives by modern standards. It wasn't until the DC-3 came in (1935) that longevity was achieved. Mjroots (talk) 07:20, 18 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, there are a few earlier relatively long-lived types, like the Ford and Junkers trimotors, and even the Boeing 247. One thing that makes the DC-3 such a special case was the enormous number of military ones that were built during the war. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 13:46, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I've amended the inclusion criteria. I trust there are no objections. Mjroots (talk) 14:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * No objection here....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 15:46, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Bold face
These guidelines suggest that links should be in bold face. Why is this? MOS:BOLD describes the situations where bold face should be used, and links in lists is not one of them. 80.189.156.156 (talk) 20:56, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Target articles from such list articles are normally bold. Take a look at the main page.  See the bold linked articles?  They lead to other "primary" articles.  The Rambling Man (talk) 21:02, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria
A stand-along accident page isn't useful at gauging importance, especially prior to WW2, when available detail, for aircraft and accident, aren't sufficient to justify splitting the page. Almost every accident listed prior to the 1930s was split by an enterprising editor to get them included here, but are of negligible importance, while most of the significant accidents are conspicuously absent because editors haven't pointlessly copied the material to a new page. That creates an enormous bias against historical accidents, which is why almost ALL of the most significant accidents are missing, having been deliberately excluded with pointless, arcane restrictions that have ZERO referential support. Per WP:LISTCRITERIA: list criteria should be unambiguous, objective, and be supported by reliable sources, and avoid original or arbitrary criteria. The current criteria meets NONE of those requirements, and doesn't even match the title. It seems to be a case of editors panicking as the number of entries was VASTLY larger than anticipated - perhaps as their knowledge is restricted to a period when accidents are at historical lows, and when every commercial aircraft incident gets a page, regardless of importance. The answer isn't arbitrary restrictions, but to manage the list to provide value to the reader, who should come away with an overview. As it stands, these fail miserably at their raison d'être because the inclusion criteria's biases are so enormous.

Seating limitations come from trying too hard to restrict the size of the list, but fail completely at distinguishing between significant and non-significant, are entirely arbitrary, and are unnecessarily confusing. The number of seats or passengers rarely makes an incident significant by itself. It simply isn't a valid criteria. Akradecki gets it - included accidents need to have verifiable, non-trivial coverage from multiple independent reliable sources, and result in changes to procedures, regulations, or to the design, be unusual in terms of circumstance or the aircraft, or result in the death of someone famous, all of which can easily be determined with references. That is far less confusing and opaque than the current rules, and people can understand and support the reasoning for them, eliminating fights. The bias also extends to accidents outside of the US and UK, as those aren't likely to get a page of their own, even when they are significant and otherwise meet requirements for inclusion.

The nature of this list (which in its current form is useless) suggests going by eras would be ideal. Nothing that requires the content be on one page, and arguments about keeping it together are moot since no overview is meaningful anyway as the page is so massively skewed. A split into pre-ww1, between the wars (1919-1939), WW2 (1939-1945) (commercial/non-war related), post-war (1945-1952) & jet (post-1952) eras would be easy to do. Not all such splits may be needed, but they at least offer non-arbitrary criteria. Start with pre and post WW2. Sorry for the length of the post.&#32;- NiD.29 (talk) 10:09, 14 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Sorry for the brief reply, but your arguments make sense to me! - Ahunt (talk) 15:31, 14 August 2022 (UTC)