Wikivoyage:Airport Expedition

This expedition aims to decide the best way to improve coverage of airports on Wikivoyage and to oversee the implementation of ideas developed here.

• Hanging around in airports is a significant part of modern day travel, and improving that experience for travellers is part of our mission.
• The approach to airport guides has so far been somewhat ad-hoc, with no specific criteria as to when an airport guide is required as a separate article, the touchstone being really huge.
• It is preferable to develop some guidelines for structure and formatting before creating large numbers of articles, as this will save time and reduce misunderstanding and conflict later.
• It is desirable to fit articles into the existing article structural framework where appropriate.

• Develop sample templates for airport articles
• Develop and build consensus for when airport articles are required separate from article guides.
• Create an initial series of articles about key international airports, using the new template.
• Iron out any flaws in the template or the criteria used to apply it.
• Get an airport article to star status.

Note that numbers in the second table are not dynamically calculated and must be manually updated. Last updated on 22 August 2017.

Click on number to get an updated list of pages by status. (Note sometime the link just sits there, usually due to the database updating, come back in 10 minutes.)

If you have created an airport article, please add it to one of the lists below. Article status for airport articles are described in Wikivoyage:Airport guide status.

Infobox

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Please add the following infobox to the talk page of any new article created through this expedition:

This article was created as part of the Airport Expedition to decide upon and implement the best means of writing airport guides. If you have any ideas as to how the approach used here could be improved, please join our discussion there.

This is rendered by typing {{Airport expedition}}.

The original discussion that permitted airport articles for large airports is at Wikivoyage talk:What is an article?/Archive 2003-2013#Explicit exception for large airports.

1. Develop the Frankfurt airport guide to be the best possible structure for a large airport.
2. Consider an airport that covers a region, and where the information is best deposited.
3. Consider cities that have multiple airports, like London, where Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports information is split out, but Luton, City and Southend airports are included in the city's article.
4. Agree on suitable template.
5. Develop high quality airport articles for major facilities, using the above template.
6. Develop a manual of style for Project:Air travel information.

In the "get in" section of an article, all links that refer to air travel should point to the relevant airports if an airport article exists. Ambiguous statements like "Airline X flies to London" should be avoided and the exact airport should be identified and visible to the reader if possible. If airlines frequently switch the airports within a metro area that they serve, it should be mentioned.

The template {{IATA}} is used to identify airports, both large airports with articles and small and medium sized airports just listed on a nearby city page. The three letter code is often also used as a redirect to the airport article or the By plane section of a city article. Codes used can be seen at Wikivoyage:Airport Expedition/TLAs. The intention is to provide a clear destination page for detailed information on an airport. An airport will serve many cities in an area but it is a good idea to have details about the facilities available in one place so as not to have duplicate and often out of date information in multiple articles. Individual articles would still have details on how to get to and from the airport specifically related to that destination.

The template creates one or two clickable links:

• "IATA" is a clickable link to Wikipedia's article on IATA
• The three letter code is a clickable link to the airport article, if the abbreviation exists as a redirect

For instance, {{IATA|LAX}} produces, LAX ^IATA links to w:IATA airport code and LAX, a redirect to Los Angeles International Airport. As of 2017, the {{IATA}} template appears about 3600 times in the English-language Wikivoyage to point to about 1800 different airports. Only a small minority of these airports will ever qualify for their own article.