Talk:1961 Cincinnati Zantop DC-4 crash

Notability

The article is notable due to the number of accidents on the approach to the particular runway 18. Later accidents had a high loss of life. This accident and the others were noted to be a pilot error, but the compounding factor was the local terrain with the airport atop the hill overlooking the Ohio River. Until modern navigational aids were put onto aircraft this approach was one of the most difficult for safe landings around the region.

Still doesn't explain why this incident is notable. Frankly, without something else going for it I don't see why the incident isn't just mentioned in a paragraph in the airport article.

I'll be nominating this for WP:AFD in a week or so. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû 00:52, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

In your first edit of the article, you tagged it for notability, but under the Wikipedia guidelines your argument is weak because the article has been adequately sourced for the size of the article. Merely because there was no loss of like, etc. with the other reasons you cited (opinions) is not a reason to delete an article. Also, you did not submit (that I can find) any discussion for whether to keep the article or not. Wikipedia is not about editors going around tagging articles for speddy deletion, when the articles are researched and do not infringe upon copyright (among other reasons). You seem to have a problem with this article's notability (your italics). There is ample evidence of the significance of the article within the article itself. It is also part of the Aviation project. That there were only two survovors should not be a reason for one editor to declare the accident insignificant, for example the article Continental Micronesia Flight 614 was also due to pilot error during a landing which was short; however, no persons died and there were only three injuries. Mfields1 (talk) 23:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

The what Wikipedia is not policy says: "merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia." Specifically I refer to point #4 under the heading Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information:

4. News reports. Wikipedia considers the historical notability of persons and events. News coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, but not all events warrant an encyclopedia article of their own. [...]

(Emphasis added.) Frankly, your argument for notability is that this is one of three crashes that occurred on a certain runway at a certain airport. Why does that make it notable enough for its own article, instead of just being a paragraph or subsection in the history section of the article about the airport itself?

As for the points I put up when I nominated it for proposed deletion, those are criteria generally used to argue the notability of other air crash articles. These criteria generally include significant loss of life, subsequent change in policy/procedure because of the crash, death of famous people, long-term consequences, unusual circumstances (ex. disappeared and was never found), significant judicial action afterwards (ex. lawsuits, manslaughter charges, and so forth), milestones or landmarks (ex. first aircraft of some type to suffer a fatal disaster, worst midair collision, worst disaster involving aircraft of a given type, and so forth).

In the case of Continental Micronesia Flight 614, which you mentioned in your above reply, the case could be made that the incident itself is not notable enough to warrant more than a section on the Continental Micronesia article. Frankly, I'm still working on accidents in the 1960s and haven't gotten to the 1980s yet. The point, however, is that your argument for notability is that it is "first of several". Can I direct your attention to the article on 1999 South Dakota Learjet crash? You will notice that section 6, Similar incidents, includes four summaries of incidents, only one of which actually has a {{main}} pointing to an actual article. This is what I propose for this article -- its integration into a parent article about the airport itself.

Your argument for notability is that it is "first of many" accidents on a given runway that later led to changes at the airport. "First of many" does not make it notable. And yes, that is an opinion.

In answer to your other points:

Your point about sourcing -- my little brother has a garage band with a rabid middle school and high school following in Baltimore. Typing his band's name into Google brings back just about as many hits as typing in "1961 Cincinnati Zantop DC-4 crash" does. Does that make his band notable enough for its own article? No. If, someday, they go on to be great, sure. If, someday, one of the bandmembers goes on to be some sort of A-list actor or musician, will it merit its own article? Probably not; it'll get mentioned in the bio, though.

It's not a question of liking the article, the topic, or so one. Its not me-versus-you. And yes, Wikipedia is about "editors going around tagging articles for speddy deletion, when the articles are researched and do not infringe upon copyright (among other reasons)". Notability has little to do with copyright infringement and research. Not notable subjects can have sources too. There's more to notability than sourcing.

Yes, I do have issues with this article's notability. Because, for the reasons mentioned above, I do not believe it to be notable. That was why I mentioned that I would be putting it up on WP:AFD in a week or so -- so that other editors would be able to weigh in their opinions as to its notability.

The fact that it's part of the Aviation project doesn't mean much. There are lots of editors and robots out there who trawl the Wiki-web and add project banners to Talk pages. (I used to be one of them myself back when I had more time.) When I do so now, I generally search for the words "aircraft", "airliner", "crash", and "flight", or for instances of certain infoboxes and categories, and then tag the Talk pages if they aren't tagged already. Other than checking to make sure the article really is about an aviation-related article, there is no "notability" checking involved. (Heck, looking back at my edits to talk pages back when I was doing that, there were times I spent less than 15 seconds on a page, including editing time.) Most of the time this work is done by robots or editors who are just passing through, neither of whoom can be cited as a source of notability. (In case you were wondering.) But I've gone off on a tangent now.

Cheers! --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû 00:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: Looking at the talk page's history, I was the one who tagged the article for WP:Aviation. And here I am arguing against its notability. Case in point. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû 00:24, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry the article upsets you so much.Mfields1 (talk) 04:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Look, it's not that it upsets me; it's just that I don't think it's notable enough to be an article. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû 04:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The article has been on Wikipedia for 3 years. It seems unusual that one editor could come along and decide it is not notable. Mfields1 (talk) 12:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) And during the past two years its only managed to break 200 page views a month once. One month it didn't even break 100 page views. Since December 2007 the article has accumulated 3,749 page views according to http://stats.grok.se/. Either way, length of time on Wikipedia is not a measure of notability. Wikipedia is a community effort, and the only way to get something done is to start the ball rolling yourself (which I have done). Frankly, if no one went around an decided questions of notability we'd have a mess ad not an encyclopedia.

You still haven't given any valid reasoning as to why this topic deserves its own article and not a paragraph in a parent article about the airport itself. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû 04:54, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no requirement that an editor has to explain notability. Mfields1 (talk) 00:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, no, but you are the most significant editor of the article to date, and, so far, the only of the four or five I alerted to about the proposed deletion that objected. I am going to put mention of this crash in other articles -- the airport, and the two other crashes on runway 18 -- and nominate this for WP:AFD. I will leave you a notice on your talk page when I do so. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû 20:13, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

On second though, would you oppose a merge? I have tagged the page for a possible merge with the following articles:

* Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport

* Zantop Air Transport

* American Airlines Flight 383

* TWA Flight 128

My reasoning is as follows:

The article's claim to notability (as per discussion above) is that it was the first of several crashes on Runway 18 at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Other than that there is little notability -- it is a transport, not an airliner; there were no changes to airline/airport/FAA policy as a result of the crash; there was no significant loss of life either of the crew or on the ground; there were no lawsuits or significant media coverage; &tc. (see previous discussion).

Keeping all that in mind, I do not believe that the accident itself is notable enough to merit its own article. I propose that the contents be merged into the following articles for the following reasons:

* Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport -- this is where the accident occurred and where Runway 18 is located

* Zantop Air Transport -- the operators of the aircraft

* American Airlines Flight 383 and TWA Flight 128 -- two notable accidents which took place on Runway 18

Please discuss. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû 20:26, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

The other articles on American Airlines Flight 383 and TWA Flight 128 should stand alone as they were significant in their own right. On the point of no lawsuits or significant media coverage, the article appeared as an AP feed in at least 10 to 12 newspapers across the country, according to what I have seen at newspaperarchive.com. At least one included a photo but it would be against wikipedia guidelines to insert the image into wikipedia. I expect if I made a trip to Cincinati to research it I could find more about the accident and add to the article. To be honest, I feel you will do whatever you decide to do and there is not much possible that I could do to prevent it. For some reason you stumbled accross the article and decided it is not notable. I can't comment on the ather editors because they often made spelling, typographical or very minor content, to improve the article. I did not find out about the accident until I was researching the other two articles, on American Airlines Flight 383 and TWA Flight 128 and saw an article in time magazine and one on another website which mentioned this accident. It was in reference to AA 383 where the CAB (now NTSB) and other articles made the connection between the local terrain, the position of the runway and the available cockpit instrumentation of that era which contributed greatly to that accident. Many local people felt the runway and airport was seriously flawed and at one point the governor of Ohio called for its closure (which is interesting in itself, because the airport in in Kentucky). I realize that to you perhaps all of this means nothing but to be the accident is notable because of the lessons not learned. I was going to order the CAB report of the accident but my budget did not allow it. Mfields1 (talk) 23:55, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Merging the article into the Zantop Air Transport is not a good idea because it would weight that article too high with emphasis of the one crash. Maybe you would be of the opinion that the Zantop Air Transport article is not even worthy of an article, but I have found wikipedia is used by a lot of people and they become editors and improve even stub class articles, if only because wikipedia exists. Some can argue that wikipedia should not be an encyclopedia of everything, but I would say on the other hand, many people made their living because of companies like Zantop airlines and therefore that in itself provides some notability in the continuum of time, as companies start up and either grow, die or are sold and bought by others. Mfields1 (talk) 00:00, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

This is the article I referred to: [1] Mfields1 (talk) 00:13, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Considering the size of the Zantop Air Transport article, I'm finding myself in agreement with you that merging there would put a lot more significance on the crash. As for merging into American 383 and TWA 128, I was thinking something along the lines of how 1999 South Dakota Learjet crash had a section on similar incidents, which contained about a stub's worth of an article of information on a series of related crashes, most of which didn't have a dedicated article of their own. I'm doing a little more research and I can't seem to figure out if anything actually became of all these accidents on Runway 18. While the governor of Ohio called for its closure, I can't find any mention of whether the airport was cited or extended it or did anything to make it safer. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû 00:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the tags, as this discussion is effectively closed and action has already been taken to address the issue.Petebutt (talk) 07:42, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Dead link

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Dead link 2

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Flight engineer

Yeah, let's add what we THINK must be true, no matter what the sources say. (Here is yet another source not mentioned in the article.) ErikvanB (talk) 02:59, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Details about the runway

Does anyone have information why in about 15 or 20 years three planes crashed on this one runway? What was so hard about landing there? Bad visibility? Too many trees? Three planes in about 2 decades seems excessive considering the other 2 accidents after this one had such high fatality and casualty rates Bucky winter soldier (talk) 13:24, 6 October 2023 (UTC)