Talk:Caledonian Airways

Untitled

"Excellent"?-POV. Antonio Porto Alegre Martin

If the Airline of the Year Award was given to the airline for excellent service than it is factual. Not sure which Airline of the Year award Caledonian won but from a recent OAG Airline of the Year webpage awards recognize excellence, both in the air and on the ground.MilborneOne 21:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

BCAL Retired Staff

Is there a website recording names/addresses of BCal staff? I worked with thewm some years ago and would like to make contact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.131.240.45 (talk) 11:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Second incarnation

The so-called "second incarnation" of Caledonian, which really had no connection at all with the original Scottish independent airline Caledonian other than replacing the British Airtours name of BA's former charter subsidiary, had a poor reputation as far as I can recall, especially their L-1011s because these suffered several well-publicised breakdowns and delays in their latter years. Therefore, I don't agree with the author that the second Caledonian had a strong market position because its reputation compared poorly with that of the original one. Also, on a slightly different note, the article somehow misses out many important facts that made Caledonian stand out from the crowd (the other independents of its era), i.e. who its financial backers were (several institutional investors with Scottish roots on both sides of the Atlantic), that it was the most consistently profitable UK independent of its time, it acquired a market-leading position in the transatlantic affinity group market securing a market share of 22% (more than all the other affinity carriers combined), it made two unsuccessful attempts to apply for scheduled licences to the US, Canada and Europe (1964 and 1967), it was one of the first UK independents to introduce state-of-the-art jet aircraft into its fleet (two Boeing 707-320Cs delivered directly from the manufacturer in 1967/8, followed by One-Eleven 500s from 1969) so that by the time it took over BUA it was an all-jet operator, as well as the background to and rationale of acquiring loss-making BUA from British & Commonwealth (the "Second Force" concept as outlined in the 1969 Edwards report by using BUA and its scheduled route licences as "vehicle" to turn itself into a fully fledged scheduled airline). I feel these details should be added to the article to give it some educational value, make it more informative and less something written by plane spotters for other plane spotters.Pimpom123 21:38, 12 May 2009 (GMT)

Some good points, perhaps the two different airlines need seperate articles! You are welcome to improve the article all it needs are reliable sources for the information. MilborneOne (talk) 21:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Have now completed re-writing this article. Hope the result is presentable and will appeal to people with diverse aviation-related interests.Pimpom123 01:23, 17 May 2009 (GMT)

Thanks for the hard work - not read it all yet! but just one observation the two accidents are probably worthy of an article each with just a brief summary in this article. (Also any reason why you edit as an IP user 82.43.216.116 but sign the messages as Pimpom123 who hasnt edited since 2007!) MilborneOne (talk) 21:24, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks also for your feedback. Please try to alter the part about the accidents as you suggested if you can. As to your question why the IP address of my edits differ from my sign-in is because I used a friend's laptop to do my edits. My PC packed up some time ago, and I still haven't found the time to buy a new one.Pimpom123 22:07, 18 May 2009 (GMT)

I will have a look at the accidents later - just to note using an IP with a different username could be misleading, perhaps you should mention the IP address on the Pimpom123 user page just to make it clear to other editors - you dont need a computer of your own, you can log in with your own username on any computer. MilborneOne (talk) 21:12, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Formatting

I have undone a bunch of edits that were inconsistent with the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, were unnecessary, or were unnecessarily repeated. WP:MOS says:

Write out both the full version and the abbreviation at first occurrence: When introducing a new name in an article, it is good practice to use the full name on its first occurrence, followed by the abbreviated form in parentheses. For example, The New Democratic Party (NDP) won the 1990 Ontario election with a significant majority (first mention of New Democratic Party in the article), and The NDP quickly became unpopular with the voters (subsequent mention).

WP:LINK says:

Plurals and possessives. When forming plurals, do so thus: greengages. This is clearer to read in wiki form than greengages—and easier to type. This syntax is also applicable to adjective constructs such as Moldovan and the like.

WP:OVERLINK says:

In general, link only the first occurrence of an item.

So pipe linking "British Overseas Airways Corporation" so that it only shows "BOAC" is incorrect. And there is no need to pipelink [[East Africa|East African]] -- [[East Africa]]n works just as well, and is what is recommended by WP:LINK. Ground Zero | t 02:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

A lot of readers won't know that "New York JFK" means the airport. It is clearer to non-technical readers to use the full name. Ground Zero | t 01:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

As well as

This really means "and", doesn't it?

WP:ATE says:

Articles should use only necessary words. This does not mean using fewer words is always better; rather, when considering equivalent formulations, choose the more concise one. Consider the view of William Strunk, Jr. from the 1918 work, The Elements of Style:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Reduce sentences to the essentials. Wordiness does not add credibility to Wikipedia articles. Avoid temporary expressions like "due to the fact that" in place of "because", or "at the present time" for "currently". The ideal method of specifying on-going events is "as of 2009". Wikipedia "grammar bots" will replace these types of expressions with correct wording.

Conciseness does not justify removing information from an article. The use of subjective qualifiers should be avoided.

Ground Zero | t 17:45, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Notes

Footnotes are placed in a common list at the bottom of the article by putting the "" tags before and after the reference. This is how references are formatted in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Footnotes. Ground Zero | t 01:40, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

References

Reversion of edits that distort meanings

User Ground Zero: Have changed back the sentence It ... Britain's most consistently profitable airline and ... most finacially secure independent airline ... to It ... Britain's most consistently profitable and ... most finacially secure independent airline ... for the following reason: This sentence only compares Caledonian's financial performance with that of other independent (ie private) British airlines and not with all British airlines of its era, as this would include the two contemporary government-owned corporations (ie BEA and BOAC) that dominated the British air transport scene at the time as well. The reason for excluding the latter from that comparison is their 100% ownership by the UK Government of the time. The important point here that is of relevance to this sentence in the "Caledonian" article is that the corporation's financial performance really didn't matter because they were not run as commercial enterprises that were expected to rise and fall by their financial performance, but rather as extensions of the British state which in those days was always prepared to do what it takes to ensure BEA's and BOAC's survival, even at great expense to the UK taxpayer. To put it another way, comparing Caledonian's - or, for that matter, any other UK independent airline's financial performance - with BEA and/or BOAC would be pointless in this context. If you get a chance to read up on the sources cited in that article, this will perhaps become clearer to you and others who don't know this background. Aviator369 (talk) 08:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I take your point about the subtle change in meaning here. I was just trying to get around what I see as being the clumsy "as well as" construction. The new version you have written works better. Thanks. Ground Zero | t 17:26, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Frank Hope

John De La Haye, who is credited in the current article with being one of the two prime movers of Caledonian Airways resigned quite early in the airline's life in order to create a new holiday resort in Javea, Spain. From then on, if not before, Frank Hope, as Deputy Managing Director, along with Adam Thompson were the main forces within the airline's management. Their offices were side by side within a single suite and they shared the same secretary, Margaret Trett.92.22.202.90 (talk) 14:42, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I recently availed myself of a chance to verify your claim in Crawley Library where they have a reference copy of Adam Thomson's autobiography High Risk: The Politics of the Air. This clearly states on page 160 that John de la Haye was absent from Caledonian for just two years to pursue his own business interests and that, upon his return, he was re-elected as a board member. I am therefore of the opinion that your statement is not corroborated by the facts (at least those that are in the public domain) and that, for this reason, your claim lacks validity. Aviator369 (talk) 03:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Caledonian Airways logo

The Caledonian Airways logo in the airline info box is NOT the original 1960s independent Caledonian's logo. It actually is the 1980s BCal logo as adopted by British Airtours following the former's takeover by the latter's parent in 1988. The two - the 1960s Caledonian logo and the 1980s BCal logo - can clearly be distinguished by taking a closer look at the appearance of Lions Rampant in each of them and by the font style used for the Caledonian name as it appeared on fuselages (the font style in the logo in the airline infobox resembles the one used for the British Airways name in BA's first post-privatisation, "midnight blue and pearl grey" Landor Associates logo.

Would it be possible to replace that logo (nice though it looks) with an "authentic", 1960s one? Aviator369 (talk) 01:47, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Correction of time frame regarding late-1960s ATLB transatlantic scheduled licence hearings

The annotation of the relevant correction in the article's revision history relates to a contradiction in the corresponding passages in the British Eagle article. Aviator369 (talk) 11:12, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Revert

I notice an anonymous editor has reverted a large revamp of the article. Prior to my edits, this article was far short of many of Wikipedia's quality guidelines, per below. This sort of reverting is highly disruptive, especially given the edit summary "sub-sections too big; loss of links to individual sub-sections from other articles; loss of information". If these were issues of concern, they could easily have been dealt with in a much more appropriate fashion. It should especially be noted that no information was removed from the article and that the information was restructured in a more encyclopedic and more reader-friendly way. The only exception is the "second incarnation" which has nothing to do with this article, as it is an entirely different company only sharing the name and logo. Prior to my edits, the article had a too short lead section which did not accurately summarize the article (see WP:LEAD), it had many shortcomings related to the Manual of Style, including use of weasel words (such as for instance "fortunately"), it lacked proper conversion between imperial and metric units, it had numerous instances of overlinking and repeated linking, incorrect use of all-caps, boldface and italics, wrong use of hyphens and dashes (see WP:DASH) and incorrect use of abbreviations (particularly of of m for million, which is not permitted). Further issues with the article include incorrectly and inconsistently formatted references, the use of multiple references for single entries, non-proper nesting of references (i.e. listing a reference twice instead of reusing the ref), and using notes to portray information which should be included in the text. Although the prose is generally good, there have been some areas where it needed to be tweaked, either to make it clearer, to improve grammar and typography, and to correct the repeated use of extremely short and sometimes single-sentence paragraphs. Please feel free to correct any individual shortcomings that may have arisen in the revamp, but reverting as was done today is not acceptable. Arsenikk ^(talk) 21:40, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The reason I reverted is that the new version contained a few factual errors (most probably as a result of cut and paste mistakes), most importantly that it states Grantley Adams Airport in Barbados was a base for Caledonian; this was never the case (they were always based at Gatwick). So, before you change anything, please, please read up the relevant sections in the sources cited as far as possible. Also, I don't agree with you that the article falls far short of Wikipedia standards; on the contrary, compared with many other airline articles I find it one of the better ones because it contains many facts relating to the background of the airline (unlike some others that seem to have been written by plane spotters for fellow plane spotters. Furthermore, even though Wikipedia has many protocols and guidelines on how to write a "good" article, I think authors (those who have contributed to writing this article before you changed it) should be given a certain amount of leeway rather than being too prescriptive. No two users' style of writing will be alike. Therefore, we shouldn't be too mean-spirited towards our fellow users by saying "this or that is not permissible", as long as it accurately and adequately deals with the article's subject matter. This smack a bit of "rules like in a jail" (in terms of no freedom of expression). Last but not least, I feel we should look favourably on articles that were written in a more academic style than dumbing everything down to the level of "Hello" or "Take a Break" like in so many other articles I happened to come across in this medium. At least in that way, we can help people who use Wikipedia as a source for their academic pursuits (eg students).

User:Arsenikk: I recently noted your dispute with an anonymous user reverting your edits. I agree that the article prior to your edits had certain stylistic issues as per relevant Wikipedia models and that there is plenty of scope for improving the overall presentation (eg by using a more "to-the-point" style of writing that expresses the contents more succinctly). Furthermore, I do agree that the manner in which aforesaid user stated his concerns and just revert to the previous version (before your edits) may not have been entirely appropriate. However, this anonymous user does have a few valid points:

• The way you summarised the lead and restructured the information does not make it more encyclopedic and more reader-friendly. On the contrary, to me it reads more like an introduction to an article in a glossy life-style magazine. To give you an example, you refer to both Caledonian's fatal DC-7 accident and the subsequent non-fatal incident involving another example of the same type in the airline's fleet in the lead. Accidents should not be listed in the lead of an airline article at all, unless these were remarkable in their own right (eg the Pan Am flight 103 disaster over Lockerbie or the collision of one of the same airline's 747 with another example of the type operated by KLM at Tenerife Los Rodeos). Caledonian's accidents/incidents were not important enough in the wider context of aviation history to warrant inclusion in the article's lead. Even the other examples I mentioned (Lockerbie and Tenerife) should be confined to the relevant article's "Accidents/incidents" section. Another example illustrating this are your removal of the previous lead's sentence stating how the airline grew annual passenger numbers from just 8,000 at its inception to 100 times this number towards the end of its existence. Including this in the lead is really important because it emphasises how this airline had come from nowhere and over the course of its 10-year existence leap-frogged many (originally) bigger competitors.

• Your edits contain 2 factual errors as per the sources cited, ie 1) it says somewhere in your lead that they were "permitted to buy 707s but had to buy One-Elvens". This is totally wrong. When Caledonian was around, the UK government had lost its power to dictate to effectively stop private airlines from importing foreign-built aircraft by denying them access to foreign exchange as happened during British Eagle's early years (compare relevant sub-section of British Eagle article). Caledonian, in common with all other private UK airlines, was free to buy whichever aircraft they fancied. The only point in dispute with Board of Trade was the payment of the 14 or 15% import tax on newly built foreign aircraft. In other words, had they agreed to pay the tax, there would have been no legal grounds whatsoever for the UK authorities to stop them from bringing these aircraft into Britain. (The reason Caledonian didn't agree to pay that tax was because they wanted a level playing field with state-owned UK long-haul flag carrier BOAC who had been exempted by the UK authorities from paying this tax on the import of a pair of new 707s, on the understanding that these were to be primarily used as freighters, a role the home-grown Super VC10 could not perform because of its far smaller cargo-carrying capability and lack of passenger/freighter convertibility). Therefore, regarding the short-haul re-equipment decision, Caledonian was always free to buy 737-200s instead of One-Eleven 500s, as long as they agreed to pay the import duty. (In fact Caledonian's contemporary competitor Britannia Airways did decide to pay the tax on their new short-haul 737s rather than switching to the One-Eleven because they felt that in the long run cost savings from operating 737s outweighed the import tax they would have saved had they bought British rather than American.) The other factual error relates to stating that Grantly Adams Airport in Barbados was the airline's main base when, in actual fact, it always was at Gatwick, which the anonymous user had already mentioned.

• Your attempt to remove the previous version's footnotes and reintegrate these into the main narrative has, in my opinion, not succeeded in making the article more encyclopaedic and user-friendly. These footnotes are very context-specific: reintegrating them into the main body of the article distracts the reader from the main flow of the narrative; however, they are nonetheless of importance to readers who wish to know more about a context-specific background. To give an example, the reason I personally added a footnote was to explain that the term "independent" in the context of a private British airline of that era (like Caledonian, for instance) was defined by their financial and operational independence from wholly government-owned flag carriers (like BEA and BOAC in Britain's case). This differentiated airlines like BUA, Caledonian, Eagle, Dan-Air and Laker from airlines like BEA/British Airtours, BEA/British Helicopters, Cambrian, BKS successor Northeast and Skyways Coach-Air, which the UK government indirectly owned (wholly or partially) by the very fact that these were subsidiaries of other UK government corporations (BEA or, in Skyways Coach-Air's case only, the UK's state-owned Transport Holding Company). Therefore, the latter were not independent even though they were technically private sector companies as well. Besides, your replacement of the term "independent" with "charter airline" in the lead misses out this concept entirely, which is important in the article's historical concept. To include all this in the amin body, distracts the reader. This is why it should be placed in a footnote, which is also good academic practice to which an encyclopedic medium like Wikipedia should aspire as opposed to being merely entertaining like life-style publications. For the same reason, I have included details that are specific to BUA's second force bid in a footnote as well. (The others must have been added by other users for similar reasons).

• Your attempt to merge the individual fleet tables in the "Aircraft operated/fleet" section is a good start, but misses the point: rather than including how many units they operated of each aircraft type over the airline's life cycle, it should include the exact fleet breakdowns and employee numbers as stated in the earlier version as this will give readers an overview of how Caledonian progressed during its (relatively) brief existence. You could also add a second table that lists passenger numbers and profit figures according to the years in which these were recorded. (This information already exists in the narrative).

Last but not least, please, please, please always use context-specific common sense before applying Wikipedia style guides instead of doing it rigidly.

Please try to reflect on the issues I have raised before changing anything. Devanahalli2008 (talk)

A few more points for you,User:Arsenikk (or any other user of this medium), to consider before changing this article include:

• Try to keep what made Caledonian unique; for example, that they were the first to start "affinity" group flights across the Atlantic, in the face of opposition from established airlines such as BOAC and Pan American; that this was based on a 3-year, so-called 402-type licence issued by the FAA in 1963 following Presidential approval from John F. Kennedy. Keeping this as it was in the version before the edit User:Arsenikk made conveys to the reader that this airline was a trail blazer. Perhaps a little background information to this story, which is not included in the article but can be gleaned from the sources cited, will help understand its significance: Following its formation in the early 60s, Caledonian had retained the services of an American lawyer, a Mr Leonard Bebchick, who was poring for them over relevant legislation, rules an regulations to find a loophole to help the airline break into the lucrative North Atlantic market with a new, low-fare whole-plane charter concept that took advantage of the upstart's lower costs as a result of fewer overheads compared with the established carriers. Mr Bebchick found what Caledonian was after when he discovered that obscure 1953 IATA "affinity" rule, permitting fares to be charged that were far lower than that organisation's members' officially approved minimum fares, as long as there was some sort of "affinity" between the passengers, who needed to travel together as a group for reasons other than securing a cheap fare for themselves. This in turn was modelled on a similar scheme that existed in 1930s Britain for local and regional bus services. I think, the guy under whose leadershp this happened was Don McKinnon, a Brit who was IATA's first Secretary General after World War II. This example also illustrates what I meant in my previous comment by aspiring to make encyclopedic contents in Wikipedia interesting rather than entertaining as in life-style media.

• Be careful when amending hyperlinks to related articles that these are accurate in their historic context and relate to commonly used and understandable terms, rather than official versions that may be rarely used. For instance, when mentioning airport names in the hyperlink, make sure that these were in use at the time to which the article relates. In the case of Caledonian this means that it needed to be verified whether at the time of the airlines inaugural flight from Barbados to Gatwick the airport in Barbados was already known as "Grantley Adams"; if it was known by a different name than that name needs to appear either in the hyperlink or be put as brief explanation in brackets behind it, stating that it was known by a different name at the time in context. On the subject of official airport designations, it should also be taken into account that some fancy additions to official airport names have been dreamt up by their marketing departments; therefore, any user wanting to use the official airport designation in a hyperlink should ask him-/herself whether using it really makes sense, adds informative value for and is easily understood by readers. In the context of this and other Wikipedia airline articles, referring to John F. Kennedy airport without "International" as used in the official designation should be clear enough to make readers understand which airport the article discusses; similarly, the One-Eleven was at the time referred to as the "BAC One-Eleven", rather than the "British Aircraft Corporation One-Eleven" (much like a 707 was referred to as a "Boeing 707" instead of a "Boeing Airplane Company 707", or a DC-8 was a "Douglas DC-8" and not a "Douglas Aircraft Company DC-8").

• Please keep footnotes (Rather than re-integrating into the main narrative) if these are very context-specific, do not warrant a separate article because the subject they deal with is too specialised and/or there is insufficient source material in the public domain, but are nonetheless important to know for those who require additional information in a very specific context; a good example here is the footnote explaining that the "affinity" group charter concept was derived from a similar 1930s scheme for bus operators.

• Moreover, try to keep individual sections of the article short and, if needed, break a bigger section down into smaller sub-sections. This helps keep the readers' attention and makes it easier for them to look for specific information. In the context of the Caledonian article, the version prior to User:Arsenikk's edit manages this much better in my opinion; the section entitled "Expansion" is too general and makes it too much like just another airline article as it not adequately emphasise what made this airline unique.

• Before expanding the lead, ask yourself whether this adds anything that is important enough for the reader to know before getting a chance to actually read the rest of the article, where all this information can be found. Leads that are too long and/or too detailed risk merely repeating what is said in different words in the main body of the article; in the case of Caledonian, I feel it summarises the main points adequately and is very different from the lead to the British Eagle article before another anonymous user recently expanded it, which was made up of only two sentences (the first one stating the period of time during which the airline operated and the second mentioning where it was based during that time).

• Try to keep the brief section dealing with Caledonian's reincarnation following the takeover of its successor British Caledonian by British Airways because these events are linked as the acquisition of Caledonian's successor by British Airways transferred the ownership of the Caledonian brand to the latter, which was then used to give a stronger brand identity to British Airtours, the former British Airways charter subsidiary by trying to establish an emotional connection in Airtours customers' minds with the well-regarded former Caledonian brand.

• Before implementing Wikipedia's various style guidelines, sheets and templates, always ask yourself whether this really improves the quality of the article and adds any value for the reader; if this is not the case, just do not do it (this is waht I meant in my earlier comment by [blindly] applying such guidelines rigidly).

I hope these suggestions help in deciding on how best to improve the article.

Devanahalli2008 (talk)

External links modified

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