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.

Rationale

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.

Goals

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.

Article criteria

The main criteria for determining if an airport article is appropriate:

Does the airport service connecting flights? Only airports large enough to service connecting flights should be considered for articles since travelers are unlikely to be spending significant time at airports that serve only as departure and final destination points.
Does the airport have enough food and shopping options to fill out an entire "Buy" and "Eat and Drink" section?

Template

The Wikivoyage:Airport article template should be used for creation of all airport articles. To create a new article with the airport article either click on the "Huge airport" link when creating a new article or add the following text to the article, save, and then edit again to fill in all fields: {{subst:airport}}.

Articles

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.)

Articles by status of Airports
Type/Status Matrix	Outline	Usable	Guide	Star	Total
Airport	39 ^oa	43 ^ua	18 ^ga	0 ^sa	100

Articles lacking listings.
Airports	sleep	eat	see	do	buy	any
has no	12	32	43	49	39	8

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.

Bare outline airport articles

The following are ranked outline and provide less than the information necessary to make them particularly helpful to our readers, please do edit in any way you're capable of

Ranked outline but getting there

These articles are ranked "outline" but provide suitable information in many fields. Their status may be due to the lack of a listing of a certain category or due to not having been reassessed in their status when a corresponding listing was added

Ranked usable

The following airports are ranked usable. Airport articles that have already been featured as Featured Travel Topic are marked with an asterisk (*)

Ranked guide

The following airports are ranked guide. Consider editing them to make them feasible for nomination for Featured Travel Topic. Currently there is no airport ranked as a star, but your edits might just get us there. Airport articles that have already been featured as Featured Travel Topic are marked with an asterisk (*)

Future targets

These airports have been considered worthy of their own articles, but do not yet have an independent article. If you start an article for one of these articles, please move it to the 'works in progress' section above, merge it with any existing pages/redirects and add the infobox below to the new article's talk page. If you wish to add another article for creation through this expedition, please discuss it on this page's discussion area first.

Infobox

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}}.

References

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.

Things to do

Develop the Frankfurt airport guide to be the best possible structure for a large airport.
Consider an airport that covers a region, and where the information is best deposited.
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.
Agree on suitable template.
Develop high quality airport articles for major facilities, using the above template.
Develop a manual of style for Project:Air travel information.

Style advice

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.

IATA airport codes

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.

Linking to airports

If there is an airport article then redirect the code to that page

e.g. For FRA^IATA, the page FRA contains #REDIRECT[[Frankfurt Airport]]

If there is no airport article the redirect should be to the relevant section of closest city article.

e.g. For STR^IATA, the page STR contains #redirect[[Stuttgart#By plane]]

Article referencing airport codes that do not have a redirect page are listed in Category:Airport code pages missing

Small and medium sized airports

For airports not large enough for their own article

On the city, or district, page closest to the airport create a listing of type=go
Use the IATA template in the alt field
Use the wikidata function in listing editor to connect to Wikipedia and fill in coordinates and possibly image information.
- Once Wikidata is added, on the Wikipedia page of the airport you can add the Wikivoyage template linking to city page (it will automatically jump to the listing)
Add other information such as web link and telephone number to listing
Below listing give additional information such as methods of getting to the airport from city centre and flight destinations.
In Sleep section of city list a couple of hotels near the airport.

Airports listed in city articles (as well as airport articles) can be found at Category:Airport listing

Useful links

IATA search page