Talk:Bassel Al-Assad International Airport

Proposed merger

I'm somewhat concerned at the creation of an additional article to cover an airport that already has an article, without any reported major structural changes consequent on declaring it an 'airbase'. Nowhere in the flurry of reporting of the Russian arrival at Latakia has there been any mention of creation of additional runways, major maintenance facilities, taxiways, air traffic control towers - anything that would make this 'airbase' more than the military use of parking facilities and hangers at the existing Latakia airport. Can anyone give me any solid evidence that any extra, permanent facilities, such as a separate runway, hangers, totally separate from the existing airport have been created? Therefore, the Khmeimim Air Base (do we have reliable sources describing it at exactly that title)? article should be merged into this page. Buckshot06 (talk) 00:40, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I am opposed to the merger of articles concerning Khmeimim Air Base (KAB) to B. Al-Assad Int. Airport (LTK) for these reasons:

1. KAB is a military airbase, LTK is an airport - there is a difference.
2. KAB is a de-facto Russian exclave. I doubt that the Syrian government has any authority in their domain. Command structure, governance, language - all will be different in the 2 places.
3. Available sources make it clear that substantial infrastructure (including an air control tower) have been established: There are 600-1,000 people there.
4. Reports about Russian air interventions in Syria refer to KAB as their base, not to an international airport.
5. We do not know what the future brings, but it makes common sense to keep the two entities separated.

At this point about 50% of the current LTK article is material that user:Buckshot06 simply copied from the KAB indicating that he added it. This amounts to a de-facto merger before there has been any discussion and decision. User:Buckshot06 did this although he knew that the merger is controversial. Copying is not merging and lacks attribution.Ekem (talk) 05:01, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Arguing that an airbase and an airport are different is nonsense. They are both airfields; the only difference is the function of the aircraft that use them. This place is *one* airfield - and should have *one* article. Again, no evidence has been presented here that any runways, extra hardstands, has been put up, anything that physically splits the military and civilian uses of the airfield from one into two airfields. This is one airfield with both military and civilian aircraft using it - as is clear from the photo in the infobox!! To match this, this is one airfield article with two sections, as I have replicated - there's the original civilian use, and the new military additions at the bottom. Just because the Russians want to call the place something different does not create a new airfield.

I remain baffled at Ekem's worries about my adding the mil-use to the civ-use of this airfield at the bottom - it's important data regarding this same airfield. However I should probably check re attribution templates.

Finally, as is shown at Category:Soviet Air Force bases, not everybody uses pseudo-USAF nomenclature for military airfields. To match Soviet and Russian practice, it would be more accurate to call any reference to the base Khmeimim (air base). I'm also a little concerned about the transliteration, and whether we're following how the majority of the Reliable Sources transliterate Хмеймим (and I don't mean random journalists, I mean translators who do this sort of thing). Cheers Buckshot06 (talk) 06:56, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose There is enough meat for a stand-alone and the Russians only share the runway and airfiel facilities.--Petebutt (talk) 08:29, 8 December 2015 (UTC)