Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cape Smythe Air

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Frontier Flying Service. Notability not successfully argued, redirecting as a reasonable search term J04n(talk page) 11:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cape Smythe Air

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A defunct regional air shuttle service. No sources whatsoever were used to craft the current article. What I found in a search was not of much use as it was mostly passing mentions of this outfit in articles on other subjects. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Non-notable subject. SunCountryGuy 01 23:54, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Being defunct isn't relevant. Lots of room for expansion. Lots of Google news hits. One of the airline's planes crashed, killing four people in 2000.[1]. Pburka (talk) 04:28, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's essentially a WP:1E argument with the twist of it being a company instead of a person. Crashes of small planes are commonplace in Alaska. The crash does not confer notability to the carrier that owned the plane even if it were notable unto itself. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:24, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

True, but it's certainly more than a passing reference. It made the news in Ireland. It was an IATA registered airline, which I think counts for something, and it merged with a larger airline. If the decision is to delete, I might propose merging and redirecting with Frontier Flying Service. Pburka (talk) 02:05, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Being defunct isn't relevant; being non-notable is, and a crash doesn't confer notability. By all means mention it in the Frontier article, but I can't see any need for a redirect. YSSYguy (talk) 12:18, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Alaska-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:16, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:16, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:17, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify: I only mentioned it being defunct so that we could all be clear that there is no chance of any new developments. Let's not get hug up on that point, I agree that it is not relevant as far as notability is concerned, many organizations that no longer exist are still notable. This just isn't one of them. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:53, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 11:24, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Frontier Flying Services. Not independently notable, but a reasonable enough search term that a redirect to the successor company seems like a good idea. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's a reasonable third option I suppose. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:38, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh geez. Now we've got some puffery going on. Don't be fooled, most of these new "sources" are pretty lousy, I've already removed two from completely unreliable websites. One of the others is just a picture of some old advertisements and schedules. They do nothing to establish notability and actually the information in the ad directly contradicts some of the article content. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:45, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment "Cape Smythe Air" produces 367,000 Google hits, which is a indication that there is a substantial amount of material about this airline available on the internet. In addition, this company was started in 1975, so we can anticipate that there is also a substantial amount of material offline. Public-transport airlines are public sector institutions which means that governments give such airlines attention, the public makes themselves aware of their services, and are generally notable. Government officials fly in public-transport airplanes, so there is a strong bias to give public-transport airlines regulatory attention. I started just a few hours ago working on the list of Google hits and adding references to the article, and soon I noticed that the nominator of this AfD was following me deleting some of the references I had added. At this point I now count seven messages on three websites and seven edits to the article, not a single one thanking me for being the first since the AfD nomination to take an interest in the topic and documenting its notability. Unscintillating (talk) 22:55, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As I explained both on your talk page and the article's talk page, the sources were removed because they do not even come close to meeting Wikipedia's definition of a reliable source and provided absolutely no evidence of notability even if they had been reliable. I don't usually thank people for creating a mess that I cleaned up. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:18, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Nothing demonstrates notability and most google hits are simply directory-like entries which do not confirm notability. Additionally, number of google hits is irrelevant in confirming notability, nor is the mere assumption that offline sources exist. Finally, the fact that an airline is a public sector institution is also irrelevant to the case of notability. Governments regulate thousands of things that aren't notable by themselves, for example horse trailers. That doesn't mean that a list of the number of horse trailers by county is notable. Nor does the fact that government officials use airlines notable. Government officials also use toilet paper, that doesn't make their preferred, or any, brand of toilet paper automatically notable. Ravendrop 23:01, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well put. The few sources recently added that do qualify as reliable are fine for purposes of verification but add nothing at all in terms of notability. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:20, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.