Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Airport destination lists 2

RfC - The inclusion of destination lists in Airport articles

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is no consensus amongst the various options. Although this is not a vote, I start by setting out the numbers. Option 1 had the highest support (30 editors !voted for option 1 as their only choice, compared to single digits for the rest of the options individually). However, breaking this up into option 1/2 vs. 3/4, the numbers are closer (approximately 48 vs. 33 !votes). While the majority (approximately 55%) of editors supported options 1/2, a significant plurality of editors supported options 3/4 (approximately 38%), and both sides had strong arguments rooted in PAGs. Those who support removing airport destination lists generally argued that the lists are unencyclopedic per WP:NOTGUIDE, WP:NOTDB, and WP:NOTDIRECTORY; that they regularly include unverified information; and that they are difficult to accurately maintain. Those who support keeping them generally argued that the lists are not indiscriminate travel guides and that they have sufficient encyclopedic context; that they are regularly updated; and that they are useful to readers. The verifiability issue was not resolved in this discussion: examples and counterexamples were provided, but there was no conclusive data provided. The arguments over the encyclopedic nature of the disputed information were strong on both sides and are rooted in fundamental disagreements over the meaning of WP:NOT, and this discussion did not resolve them. This close does not preclude writing or maintaining prose sections in articles that describe airports' destinations or starting individual split discussions for excessively long lists. The result of the 2023 RfC on airline list sourcing was not challenged in this discussion and thus remains in effect. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:01, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

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Airport destination lists: Should airport articles list full and complete lists of destinations reachable from the airport, or to what extent should they be curtailed?

Background: Airport destination lists have been a reasonably heavy point of contention in recent months, due to the poor (in many cases) sourcing of these lists, and the constant churn of content being added and removed, often without reliable sources. It got to the stage at one point where editors in this ANI thread were so tired that comments like Not a month goes by that we don't get a report here of some cosmic struggle over lists of destinations reachable from various airports. were left. As a result, a discussion was opened at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Airport destination lists.

As a result of that discussion, the following options were developed as ways forward for airport destinations lists. Note that in every instance, WP:V still applies, and routes must be sourced with reliable sources. Additionally, if it is decided to retain some form of destination tables, it is my intention to have a further RfC to agree upon sourcing requirements for these tables, as this point too has been the subject of sometimes heated debates.

1. Airport articles should contain comprehensive lists of routes flown from that airport (No change)
2. Split very large destination tables into separate articles, and retain smaller destination tables in airport articles. For example, the large table in Heathrow Airport#Airlines and destinations would become a List of Heathrow Airport destinations, with a {{Main}} hatnote and a brief summary in the article about the airport. Such lists would normally be considered notable provided that the airport destinations are discussed as a set in independent reliable sources; any that weren't would be merged and redirected back into the airport article to WP:PRESERVE the information.
3. Replace large destination tables with a summary in prose that does not mention most individual destinations by name. Smaller destination tables may be retained (or not, as editors of that article choose). For example, the large table in Heathrow Airport#Airlines and destinations would be replaced by a paragraph saying that it has dozens of airlines and hundreds of destinations in dozens of countries; Wikipedia would no longer contain information about the individual destinations. However, Eastern Iowa Airport#Airlines and destinations, which lists less than 20 destinations, would be left alone (unless editors of that article preferred a different approach).
4. Replace every destination table with a summary in prose. For example, Durango–La Plata County Airport#Airlines and destinations has a small table listing two airlines and four destinations, and that would be replaced by two sentences naming the two airlines and four destinations, and larger airports would have longer, potentially multi-paragraph summaries.
5. Remove destination lists - all information about destinations reachable from an airport should be excluded. For example, Kearney Regional Airport has exactly one airline (United Express) flying to only one destination (Denver, Colorado), and editors should be prohibited from mentioning the airline, the lone destination, the number of airlines, and the number of destinations anywhere in the article.

"Summaries in prose" could broadly take this form (not fixed and not in the scope of the RfC):

1. Start with a brief summary - eg. Wikipedia Airport is served by sixteen airlines, and has services to 16 countries / 3 continents. The latter would be flexible, and depend on the available sources. Primary sources such as the airport website would generally easily verify this.
2. Next, have a summary of route development, where this can be verified, including info such as when airlines start flying from the airport, significantly increase their service or cut services. eg:
   In 2019, Scottish Airlines started flying to Wikipedia Airport, with a service to Edinburgh.[ref] Subsequently, this service has expanded to include other Scottish cities.[ref]
   In 2020, English Airlines started serving Wikipedia Airport, with services to London Gatwick and Birmingham.[ref] The airline subsequently cut services, instead preferring to fly to Wikivoyage Airport.
3. Finally, where this can be sourced, have a list of statistics, such as that found at Tri-Cities Regional Airport#Statistics. Many articles already have this, and they are generally well sourced. It would help highlight how important/unimportant the airport is, especially if they can be developed further such as by adding graphs etc.

Note - any individual routes that are specifically listed in a summary, should be sourced with reliable secondary sources, sufficient to satisfy WP:NOTABILITY.

Danners430 _{tweaks made} 19:59, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

NOTE TO (future) CLOSER: There’s a lot of !votes in the discussion section. Dw31415 (talk) 18:20, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Survey (airports)

• 3, or failing that 4 - My personal vote as the opener of this RfC would be these options, as I feel it's the best balance between keeping the relevant information and doing away with unwieldy and "churny" lists. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 20:03, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1. The current airport destination tables are informative and largely kept up-to-date by dedicated editors, serving a wide range of readers effectively. The primary issue is sourcing, which requires improvement. Official airline websites should be established as the primary source. This change allows for real-time verification of flight status by any editor - offering the most current flight data available. While this approach might slightly diverge from typical encyclopedic sourcing requirements it would definitely solve the sourcing problem issue. As for cargo destination tables and sourcing - that is more complex issue that needs more discussion. Maybe, just adding a list of Cargo airlines without destinations would be sufficient Dootfish (talk) 22:30, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 (mostly) or 2 (I could live with 3 as a very distant backup option, but only if that's the only way to achieve consensus). There is no reason to treat these differently than any list of notable aspects of a subject. If an airport is notable, then what destinations are served by that airport is an important, encyclopaedic aspect of a comprehensive article. WP:SIZE should be the sole determiner of whether the list is part of the main article or a spinout list article. Thryduulf (talk) 20:36, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  Update, the more I think about this and the more comments I read, the firmer I am of the opinion that 1 (but allowing flexibility to choose between an inline list and a separate article, based on WP:SIZE considerations) is the only sensible option. There is no need to require secondary sources to discuss these aspects as a set any more than that need exists for sports team rosters and results, fleet lists, or countless other lists. Option 5 is patently ridiculous - for example it would prohibit mention of the primary reason Papa Westray Airport is notable. Thryduulf (talk) 02:47, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 There's absolutely no issue with these lists. They're well maintained and updated, easily verified, and essential to the contextual understanding of both the airport and how the region the airport serves is connected to the rest of the world. The content is clearly encyclopedic reference information. I use these lists about as much as anything else on the site. The table has also over time proven to be the best way to organise this information. SportingFlyer T·C 20:53, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  Additionally, those citing WP:NOTGUIDE are completely wrong and don't seem to understand the purpose of these lists. WP:NOTGUIDE exists to make sure we do not write articles like a travel guide instead of an encyclopedia. This information does not exist in travel guides. Route information is also encyclopedic - for instance, Rijeka Airport talks about the first commercial air routes from 1930 in its history section. The information also just needs to be correct and verifiable, which isn't a problem - these are some of the most heavily gnomed parts of the website - and by the logic being used by those proposing to eliminate them, the exact same logic would apply for train routes. SportingFlyer T·C 23:07, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

• 3/4 These lists are inherently unencyclopedic. Discussing them in prose makes sense or having a generalized, limited list in the airport articles. But Wikipedia articles are not meant to be a constantly changing (on the daily at that) morass of added and removed material. Current breaking events are one thing (and even those have their detractors among the community), but these lists inherently are unstable and their purpose is to be forever unstable, forever changing. No material in them is ever meant to be permanent. Which exemplifies why they are unsuitable for an encyclopedia. I've seen multiple editors supporting these lists in past discussions claim that they serve as direct information to build flight itineraries while traveling. That is not what Wikipedia is for. If you want a travel guide, there are sites like WikiVoyage. In short, the information of destinations should be generalized and, where possible, made into prose. The information is meant to be an overview of the subject as a general topic for the airport articles, they should absolutely not be inexhaustive, constantly changing daily lists of all possible flight routes. Silverseren^C 20:59, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 4 We should be summarizing how an airport is connected to other airports based on what third party reliable sources say, which, for all but region airports, is going to be high level and not include all possible destination. All of these tables rely too much on primary or first party sourcing, making them IINFO, in addition to NOTGUIDE. Since airlines are free to change routes at a whim, three lists are also subject to high variability, we should be looking for a stable, enduring summary, those major new routes added or removed (as covered by third party sources) can be included. Masem (t) 21:01, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 5, airports don't fly anywhere, airlines do. Routes are a property and factor of the airlines not the airport. Airline routes are very much just product listings, and they're about the airline. And this is before we take into account the massive amount of disruption to airport articles around this topic, edit wars, sockpuppets, locked articles constantly, massive violations of WP:RS etc. At the end of the day what routes airlines fly from airports isn't something that should be on the airport article. We're not a product directory, and we're certainly not for having an article on a topic that lists products from a completely separate company. Not a travel guide. Not a list of indiscriminate non-notable information. And there's not even any attempt right now to indicate, reference or support any notability to these routes. However we should be able to mention which airlines use the airport, as hubs bases etc, and which airlines fly from it, just not where to. Canterbury Tail talk 21:06, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
  • Should the sections Euston railway station#National Rail services and London Overground and London King's Cross railway station#Services be deleted? I mean, train stations don't go anywhere, trains do, right? I take it Port of Barcelona#Passenger ferries has to be deleted too since the ferry companies are separate from the port operator? What an absurd take. — Reywas92^Talk 20:26, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    • Please keep the discussions for the discussion section, and avoid WP:BLUDGEONing the process. Canterbury Tail talk 21:52, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

      @Canterbury Tail at what point does replying become bludgeoning? I'm asking because I sometimes do exactly what Reywas92 is doing here, but haven't really considered it as such. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 17:28, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

      I'm not making the same comment over and over, I'm trying to respond in different ways to some people's (not everyone's) specific comments as different points are made. We're talking about decades of work on thousands of articles potentially being deleted here under misapplication of guidelines. Many people talk about summarization, but I don't trust that the appropriate information people still want to include will be conveyed by currently unwritten summaries – that work has not been undertaken because the full list is so much more informative. But sure, I can pull back on replying. — Reywas92^Talk 17:46, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

      People already know your position, no need to restate that for forever ~2025-31733-18 (talk) 17:53, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

    Yep. Those all should go. The absurdity is having them on here in the first place. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 21:22, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 (or possibly 2 if there really are cases where the list is so long as to make the whole page unwieldy), but I doubt that happens very often). Per SportingFlyer, these are generally well-maintained by a team of editors who keep an eye on them, easy to verify and very clearly of high relevance when discussing an airport. After all, what is an airport other than a place to fly to other destinations from? For those saying it's unencyclopedic, I'm not quite sure what you think it is that an open-ended unlimited encyclopedia ought to contain. Tables of information relevant to the subject of the article are part and parcel of our content across the project. As an aside, having the lists there is also highly useful for readers - I make use of it myself frequently if I want to fly somewhere and need to see which airports you can reach that place from. Given the large number of content elsewhere on the project which is out of date, poorly sourced, pushing a POV or has other problems, this animosity towards one of the areas which is none of those things and is also encyclopedic is mind-boggling in the extreme.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:09, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 3, failing that 4. There are essentially two dimensions to this !vote. The first is the extent to which options 1 or 2 are capable of meeting WP:V. As repeated discussions on this topic, including the RFCBEFORE, have shown, there is a generalised absence of reliable secondary sources which detail airport destinations as a set. Because there are few or no primary sources which detail the cessation of routes, the maintenance of the table itself becomes an exercise in OR. We should not have content whose maintenance is simply incompatible with policy. Second, there is the more nebulous question of encyclopedic value. Clearly, airlines and destinations are to some extent important to the significance of the airport itself. But this differs for small and large airports. For a small airport, specific airlines and destinations are indicative of economic, industrial and demographic factors in the history and significance of the airport. For a large airport, it is ineffective and counterproductive to try to show these linkages with comprehensive lists; it is simply WP:TRIVIA. What is effective is to discuss the evolution, broad patterns, and groupings of routes – a task for which prose is eminently more suitable. Triptothecottage (talk) 21:14, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Triptothecottage, do you really mean secondary sources? Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent. Secondary sources provide analysis ("My airport is better than your airport for the following three reasons, so my airport should get a bigger subsidy"). Independent sources don't have a vested interest in the subject ("His airport has four non-stop destinations, and her airport has five"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  I did mean secondary sources here, as my emphasis was on avoiding OR: it is not common for us to have sources which say "here are all of the destinations serving this airport, and here is why that matters". I'm not sure the independence of sources is of particular importance here; if an airport's website has an explicit list of routes I don't think there is any major dispute about its reliability. Triptothecottage (talk) 00:29, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  I'm confused about two separate things:

  • Would you accept an explicit list of routes on the airport's own website? That wouldn't usually be a secondary source (as it's usually just a list, without any "why that matters" content).
  • If we're just writing "United Airlines, here to Denver" in the article about Smallville Regional Airport, how does the "why that matters" part help us avoid making up content that wasn't ever published in any reliable source? OR == "On Wikipedia, original research means material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists. By "exists", the community means that the reliable source must have been published and still exist—somewhere in the world, in any language, whether or not it is reachable online—even if no source is currently named in the article" (copied from the top of the policy). If you've got a primary source (like WP:PRIMARYNEWS) that says "United Airlines flies from Smallville Regional Airport to Denver", then there's no possibility of OR in putting "United Airlines flies to Denver" in the article about Smallville Regional Airport. It doesn't seem like having that source add something like "because it will promote the growth of the company and create a healthy bidness climate in the Smallville region" makes any difference at all.

  WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 London Heathrow is one of the bigger airports but I just checked its table which doesn't seem especially problematic. My main observation is that it would be cleaner and tidier without the citations and {{cn}} which seem mainly to be unnecessary clutter. A single source for this such as the airport's interactive route map would be ample.
  Insofar as there's an issue, it's the need to keep this info up-to-date but there are lots of pages like that on Wikipedia such as the holders of government offices. It appears that Wikipedia's aviation editors are on top of this and so it's not a problem that needs fixing.
  Andrew🐉(talk) 21:19, 7 December 2025 (UTC) (edit conflict)
• 1 maybe 2 I don't see personally see anything wrong with the tables so as long as they aren't like getting way too large I don't see why we should change what's working so far --2007GabrielT (talk) 21:32, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 or 2 Which destinations an airport serves and which airlines fly there are key information about an airport, making those tables all WP:DUE. For readers, tables/lists are easier to read than prose. Some1 (talk) 21:33, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  Option 1 or 2 per @Some1. Also, raising the bar of sourcing or notability creates an unnecessary effort to retroactively attempt to identify sources for notability. If I were writing a policy from the start, I might limit in some way, but I think we should give deference to the status quo. Dw31415 (talk) 02:34, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2 — here's my reasoning. I'm against prose summaries, for the simple reason that the destination table should be a summary of prose itself. Airport articles also definitely shouldn't be prohibited from talking about destinations. Sending the largest of destination lists to separate articles is the best option for convenience reasons, but also if the majority of the list is sourced to primary or unreliable sources (which happens already on huge airports, if I understand the issue at hand correctly), the list is liable to get deleted entirely, which, I agree, is sometimes just the best outcome for things that become huge points of contention and soak up editor time. Lists sourced to reliable secondary sources don't violate WP:NOTDB because they are a summary of what reliable secondary sources say about a topic.
  JustARandomSquid (talk) 21:37, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  Just another comment, I would be open to supporting option 3, but only if applied to the very largest airports. Exceptions should also be granted to airports where there is a reliable secondary source that can be expected to be able to be used. For example, in the region of former Yugoslavia, covers basically every route opening and closure, so no matter how big Belgrade Airport gets, it gets to keep it's list. (FWIW, it is already adequately sourced. Scratch that, I see a lot of Aeroroutes. Still though, it's vastly better than most. If this RfC doesn't result in its removal, I'll personally fix it.) JustARandomSquid (talk) 22:05, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 or 2 Anything that turns airports into contextless concrete and buildings is unacceptable to me. Airports stations exist to transport people. Not giving an overview of services is stripping the raison d'etre from them. I could maybe be convinced to replace the tables for large airports with paragraphs that don't list every single destination, but anything as undetailed as "you can fly to lots of places from Heathrow" is unacceptable.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 21:43, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1, or failing that 2 - I think "should" in #1 is too firm - "may" would be better - but I think the approach of generally permitting them is fine. If we do split out larger tables per #2 then I think having the parent article have a prose summary a la #3 makes more sense than some kind of short table, though - I'm not sure a short/summary version of the table would be particularly practical in most cases. In general, these lists seem to be useful to our readers - when I have mentioned this discussion to non-editors, they have been baffled that we want to remove them - and from a content policy perspective, I do not agree that they are inherently in breach of any of our content policies, so I do not feel we gain anything by removing them. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:42, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• First and foremost, strong oppose option 5 as a major overkill. Where airline flights fly to from an airport is an integral part of the daily operations of a passenger airport, similar to what are the railway lines or companies serving a train station and where the trains go to. They provide insight to the range and scope of an airport’s operations, let it be a major international hub-and-spoke transfer hub (e.g. Doha Hamad, Dubai, Singapore Changi), large domestic airport (e.g. Osaka Itami, Chengdu Shuangliu) or a small regional airport. Not mentioning such things at all, regardless of it being summarised as prose or fully listed in a table, is detrimental to the readers’ understanding of such operations and the role the airport plays.
  As for the rest of the options, I’ve said it before in WP:DESTNOT that I do not believe they violate WP:NOTTRAVEL, though I can see why some people interpret them that way. I would typically go for options 1 or 2 (no preference over each other since it’s just a matter of splitting on individual discretion), but in the spirit of a compromise to settle things once and for all, my final opinions would be supporting options 1/2/4 tied (no option 3 mainly to enforce consistency). S5A-0043🚎^(Talk) 21:53, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 or 5 - I don’t think the routes are encyclopedic. My thinking is that Airport articles should contain a simple list of which airlines regularly fly in and out of it (not destinations or routes).

Meanwhile, the linked airline articles should simply list the destinations (airports) it regularly flys to (but again, not the routes). Blueboar (talk) 22:16, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

@Blueboar, it sounds like you want this:

• The local airport article says: "Airlines serving this airport include United Airlines."
• The article about United Airlines says: "United flies to airports in Abilene, Akron, Albany, Albuquerque, Alexandria, Allentown, Amarillo, Anchorage..."
• No article says: whether it's possible to fly directly from the local airport to Abilene or Akron or Albany.

Did I understand you correctly? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Yes… you understand me correctly. Blueboar (talk) 11:59, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

The same logic needs to apply to airline destinations. A high level summary of an airlines route structure, such as hubs and principle destinations, sure, but not every smaller and regional airport, because an airline can change those at the drop of a hat. Masem (t) 00:02, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

The fact an airline has served a smaller or regional airport is some of the most important information about that smaller or regional airport, though. SportingFlyer T·C 23:08, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

• 4 as first choice, 3 as second choice. As I said at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Airport destination lists: that airlines that serve an airport is acceptable content in an airport article sounds good to me - there's almost always at the very least a press release when an airline inaugurate scheduled services from a new airport, and while WP:PRIMARY that is acceptable for citing simple facts (such as, for instance, that Fooian Airlines serves Barford International Airport) - and usually when an airline stops service to an airport this gets reported in at least the local newspaper. Routes on the other hand are sometimes - maybe even often - ephemeral things, subject to change at a moment's notice and without any notification sometimes other than being added or removed from the flight-boards in the terminal, and so destinations served lists are absolutely in violation of WP:NOTTRAVEL. That is the crux that those !voting for 1/2 seem to be not recognizing: Wikipedia is not a travel guide. If (regrettably) 1/2 passes regardless, it should be with the strict provision that all routes in lists must be cited or removed as WP:V is our single most important PAG. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:02, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 per SportingFlyer. Historical routes should also be catalogued when verifiable. The destinations flown to via an airport are more economically and socially important to the airport and the area it serves than which airlines fly those routes. J947 ‡ ^edits 22:30, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 No reason anything of the sort should be forbidden. Jclemens (talk) 22:47, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 or 2 as !vote, though in reality 1 and 2 can both be used depending on size (etc). 5 seems barmy to me, there is a reasonable disagreement by some that it is not encycloopedic, other reasonable people think it is encyclopedic. There again, it's an interesting debate here, but not an existential one. EDIT TO ADD for the Closer: Basis of my view is under WP:AIM ="The goal of a Wikipedia article is to present a neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge in a fair and accurate manner with a straightforward, "just-the-facts style".", and this information is fundamental to the purpose of an airport, travel from A to B. ChrysGalley (talk) 23:15, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1. While the destination lists tend to become somewhat out of date, especially for small airports, I nevertheless see great value in including them, and would argue a great many users come to the article for this information, and use internal links to virtually travel between destination airports and read about them. What exactly is the problem with including this content? Even for the largest airports, they are not overwhelmingly large (so I don't see a need for option 2, though I suppose in extreme circumstances, would be acceptable). Summarizing the table content in prose is a terrible idea, a table is exactly the correct format to present this information. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:04, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• After seeing months of back and forth ANIs, RSN discussions etc. option 5 the previous RFC concluded with when independent, reliable, secondary sources demonstrate they meet due, now its been discussed that it ws based on a misunderstanding of what secondary sources meant but if we ignore the secondary aspect and stick to independent, reliable, then unfortunately that has been ignored by maintainers of these tables since the rfc. Lavalizard101 (talk) 00:43, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 or 2, but either result should not be binding and up to local consensus at a particular page (e.g. if editors at Fooian Airport deem that a separate article isn't warranted despite it being large enough to split off, they should be permitted to do so). This does not have particular bearing on the verifiability of such lists, which is different (there is currently some more problematic content on some of these lists that should be removed, but this does not impinge on the encyclopedic nature of these lists on a more abstract level). However, I am also not opposed in principle to editors at a particular airline article deciding that they wish not to have a route list and instead summarize the information in prose, if that is the consensus of editors at that particular article. But I am strongly against option 4 insofar as it prohibits comprehensive lists from existing on any article, but not against not summaries in prose in the abstract. It's unclear if this RfC is supposed to be binding for all airport articles (i.e. option 1 would mandate that every airport article would have a table, even if some editors had previously preferred a WP:SPINOFF), but I would much prefer if we leave how the information is organized up to consensus of editors at that article rather than institute a particular rule for organization.Katzrockso (talk) 00:53, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1: So long as the sourcing, which has frequently been very loosey-goosey at times, is rock-solid. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 01:56, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Further events in this editing area have led me to believe that, in practice, 3 is necessary given the chronic indifference to sourcing in this area. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 17:53, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

• 3 or 4: I think there should be, at a minimum, a section that mentions destinations such as in prose form. The issue, as I'm sure most editors know, is sourcing. A lot of destinations at larger airports can be hard to find secondary sources for. I do think the lists are notable to warrant some inclusion, but I find myself going back and forth on what the best way for that information to be included is. (VenFlyer98 (talk) 02:51, 8 December 2025 (UTC))
  • There is simply no need to limit this content to only that covered in "secondary" (or non-independent) sources. It is not a controversial or exceptional claim to state an airline flies a certain route, nor are airports' or airlines' statements on these uncomplicated facts going to be biased or misleading. Even if there's not much coverage of, say, a longstanding regional route, there's no reason to exclude this when it's still perfectly verifiable through timetables, maps, or other sources that might not be secondary, since editors are still not doing any analysis or synthesis to say "JetBlue: JFK to Boston". Reywas92^Talk 04:52, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 per Masem and Bushranger. Wikipedia cannot include every fact that is verifiable, even those that are useful or interesting to certain readers. We use independent sources to establish notability for standalone articles or lists, and it's my view we should also rely heavily on the quality of sourcing to indicate what merits inclusion in an article. Not only does this serve as a bulwark against corporate promotion, it gives us a fair standard we can apply to any possible topic. And if readers want to know more than what we provide in an article? That's why we have external links. —Rutebega (talk) 03:16, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
  • Specific facts within articles are simply not subject to the same notability requirements of standalone articles as a whole. It's absurd to call simply naming a route as part of an airport's network "corporate promotion"; business activities are still encyclopedic information that we cover in a variety of contexts. We are also not including "every fact that is verifiable", which might also include frequencies, schedules, aircraft used, terminals used, and other details related to flying. Reywas92^Talk 04:52, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    It's not clear to me from your comments here why you would even be against including frequencies, schedules, aircraft used, terminals used, and other details related to flying. —Rutebega (talk) 03:16, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 It's entirely unnecessary to have yet another discussion that ponders deletion of valuable encyclopedic content from thousands of articles. Airport destination lists provide significant context about an airport's operations, such as the airlines that operate there and their relative levels of service and the airport's role in the air transportation network to serve regional, national, or international destinations, applied equally to large and small airports. Airports are not merely buildings and runways, but part of a system of commerce and transportation through their destinations. Routes are in fact a property of an airport, its raison d'etre: Airport authorities are closely involved not only with airlines' presence at the airport but also routes they fly. These airport operations are also regularly covered in a variety of news sources as a topic of interest to the general public. These tables are well maintained by many editors, and the straightforard, uncontroversial content is easily verifiable through reliable sources; there is no need to limit the type of sources that may be used as this is not going to be subject to bias or misinformation. That's part of the beauty of Wikipedia, that we can update content when it changes. Deleting the content but replacing it with a summary is not an appropriate compromise option as it does not inform readers of this key information, and it may be difficult to appropriately summarize something that is no longer in the article anyway; a table is much easier to read and simpler to convey the information than prose in some undefined form. The fact that some readers may use it to learn things about travel does not mean it is a travel guide, which refers more to a certain tone of presentation, and does not mean it should be deleted in bulk so we are less informative. Reywas92^Talk 04:52, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• 4 (or 3 as second choice): comprehensive lists are inherently unencyclopedic and go against the spirit of WP:NOTGUIDE in particular. All we need to know to understand how the airport fits into the broader context (is it a major hub serving hundreds of routes, a minor regional airport with just one or two destinations, or somewhere in between) can be expressed in prose. If you want more details, the chances are you're trying to use Wikipedia to plan a journey, in which case there are plenty of travel-oriented sites that can give the full, up-to-date picture far better than an encyclopedia could or should. Prose also gives us more flexibility to document historic aspects (e.g. the airport was well connected until the early 1990s when XYZ Airlines chose to relocate its hub to ABC...) than tables. Rosbif73 (talk) 07:43, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
  • This is a contradiction – Wikipedia doesn't give enough information and travel-oriented sites are much better, yet these simple lists that give no information beyond wikilinks to other airports served is a forbidden travel guide? I agree that we don't and shouldn't give the "full picture" – we don't say whether a route is served once a week or five times a day, we don't say what it costs or any other booking details. These tables give enough information to encyclopedically help readers understand how the airport works and how it's connected, but it's not at all enough to actually be used to plan travel. We already can describe airports use as hubs or a general number of destinations in prose, but that's no reason to delete the additional relevant content. — Reywas92^Talk 14:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    Not a contradiction at all. We've had comments in the previous discussions (and indeed in the discussion section below) stating that they have consulted these tables when stuck in an airport and trying to replan a journey. I should perhaps have clarified If you want more details than will remain in the future prose version, i.e. if you're looking for a comprehensive list of destinations... then you're probably in the first stages of planning a journey. Of course you can't go as far as booking a flight using only the information in these tables, but that doesn't change the fact that comprehensive lists go against various aspects of WP:NOT. Rosbif73 (talk) 15:16, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    I look at these lists all the time when I'm not planning journeys to or from them. I learn so much about an airport by seeing the presence of major airlines or regional airlines, nearby destinations or faraway international ones, its role as a hub or as a spoke. Why would we delete something for the very reason that we know people actually read it? That's a pretty dumb use case though. — Reywas92^Talk 15:34, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  Adding additional rationale from my comment in the discussion section below, regarding the non-encyclopedic nature of comprehensive lists: they purport to be a snapshot of destinations served at a given date (generally recent but unspecified), yet the actual destinations vary over time. How can that snapshot pass the WP:10YEARTEST? Rosbif73 (talk) 15:35, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1-ish - no action for now and escalate the discussion. Please excuse a lengthy input here.

I'm glad to see this come up because at RfC on consensus of WP:DESTNOT at WT:NOT I was disappointed that the reasonably long close for the surprisingly long RFC did not say anything about the mentions to WP:NOTDB, WP:NOTTRAVEL, and WP:NOTDIRECTORY. I say Option 1 to pick no action at this time because there was not such consensus or discussion about the general principles that would make editing easier, as seems clear from the confusion and disagreement among folks here and in the windup forming this RFC, and that lack seems why we are here. Status Quo should hold as it doesn't seem like all aspects have even emerged, plus that functionally jumping to a different end conclusion without stating such basis items would not be clear and would not provide guidance well for future edits. In particular folks are discussing just the huge airports, not guidelines that would apply for most or all airports. Caveat the Option 1 phrasing "should contain comprehensive lists of routes flown" might be better as the discussed wording 'acceptable' since that seems more where the prior guidelines were and to better respect that for many airports it is not done and maybe is not appropriate. Other items:

1. Points of general agreement - I believe there are four background points folks seem generally agreeing to -- (a) we are discussing guidance (more than an essay, less than a policy) for the demarcation of how much detail 'should' be included; (b) to consider and state how the guidance relates to existing guidance such as NOTDB/NOTTRAVEL/NOTDIRECTORY; (c) we consider and perhaps alter prior RFCs (Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 187#RfC on the "Airlines and destinations" tables in airport articles] (Nov 2023) only if secondary sources demonstrate DUE, NOCON on listing destinations) (Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 60 from January 2025 reached a consensus that both List of airlines destinations articles and airport destinations lists don't violate WP:NOTRAVEL ; and (d) stating airlines is OK, times or specific flight numbers are right out, and destinations for each airline there is where the discussion is at.
2. Escalate please - I see mentioned that similar considerations came up for rail, and I think it does or should escalate up and generally discuss as points for a higher abstract Transportation hub. For any airport, sea port, rail hub, or bus terminal it's going to be desirable to describe the location, facilities, corporations using it, and capabilities. In all cases they would be likely to at least be using the appropriate infobox items, but we're talking what content to have below that.
3. Context - In each case, the article is going to have the context of a particular airport, and that's going to be the key for WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:DUE. It is explicit for WP:RSCONTEXT. The WP:DUE question seems whether this data matters to the airport or on the scale of the airport. And the WP:V seems to relate to the prior RFC asking for secondary sources -- but most entries are getting done with primary sources of the airline. Might have to consider that 'no consensus' to make it delete all such tables or to remove the 'secondary' requirement, because de facto the requirement conflicts with it's purpose of 'not deleting' all such tables, and we wouldn't want to have just partial lists of the pieces with secondary coverage. In all cases, it seems like nobody considered what the size and location of the airport does and covering the more usual case of smaller airports. If I look at List of airports in the Greater Toronto Area, the situation for Toronto Pearson International Airport is different than Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, and much lesser for Brampton-Caledon Airport. (List of airports in India seems similar.) A major airport seems likely to have secondary press or other coverage but not for each one of a hundred routes, a small airfield might have little coverage but would for any of it's five routes, an a really tiny airport would have no coverage at all and no scheduled airline routes.
4. Some consensus? -- In the discussion at discussion was opened at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Airport destination lists, User:Danners430 said "For better or worse, airports can be measured in their importance by the number of flights they have." offering number of flights or passengers as a measure why Heathrow Airport is seen as more important than Gatwick Airport. User:The Bushranger indicated their demarcation concern is transience at "airlines that serve an airport is acceptable content in an airport article sounds good to me - there's almost always at the very least a press release when an airline inaugurate scheduled services from a new airport, and while WP:PRIMARY that is acceptable for citing simple facts (such as, for instance, that Fooian Airlines serves Barford International Airport) - and usually when an airline stops service to an airport this gets reported in at least the local newspaper. Routes on the other hand are sometimes - maybe even often - ephemeral things, subject to change at a moment's notice and without any notification sometimes other than being added or removed from the flight-boards in the terminal, and so destinations served lists are absolutely in violation of WP:NOTTRAVEL " I take from this that the list of all routes would be significant for the airport, the issue is for a daily fluctuation -- so perhaps keep the routing of a flight path as something that is coordinated and kept in place but exclude daily fluctuation such as a weather cancellation ?

Cheers Markbassett (talk) 09:06, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

@Markbassett: I take from this that the list of all routes would be significant for the airport, the issue is for a daily fluctuation No, that's not what I meant at all. Routes in general violate WP:NOTTRAVEL. Airlines are fine. I.E. "Foobar International is served by Barfoo Airlines" = okay. "Foobar International offers flights to Alphabeta, Gammadelta, and Etaiota via Barfoo Airlines" = not okay. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:45, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

User:The Bushranger - understood, but WP:NOTGUIDE does not apply because this does not give guidance or recommendations, see "not the telephone numbers or street addresses of the "best" restaurants". A list of the airlines serving an airport seems to me just a key part of the facility or capability information, just as one might have a map shown for an underground or canal ssystem showing the routes of those. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:05, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• 5 as first choice, 4 as second choice: This information is subject to change too frequently and I wonder what encyclopedic value a larger prose or list would hold. A brief paragraph about the routes is enough for most articles, if at all.Kingsacrificer (talk) 10:11, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Kingsacrificer, when you wrote that This information is subject to change too frequently, which airport did you have in mind? I'm sure it's not a small airport, since those rarely change even once a year. When I was clicking around during the drafting of this RFC, I found some that hadn't changed for longer than a decade. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I meant small to medium sized airports, particularly in India. They sometimes service a route for a month, then don't, then begin again. It's rather sporadic. Perhaps it may not be the same for other airports. Kingsacrificer (talk) 09:43, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• 4 as first choice. Then 3, then 5. The current situation is wrong. Per Canterbury Tail, the airport doesn't fly anywhere, and where airlines fly is subject to change. However, I believe that it is relevant to article prose that there be some discussion of what routes can be flown from an airport. Croydon airport, for instance, was an international airport, and that is relevant, historically significant and encyclopaedic information. The prose rightly mentions routes to India, Africa, the Middle and Far East, Asia, Africa and Australia, and mentions Qantas. Not relevant to anyone now is what flight numbers went at what times, because that is not historically significant nore encyclopaedic. That is destination guide stuff, and does not belong in an encyclopaedic article written in summary style. So prose mention of routes, where the prose and subject demands it, is fine. What is definitely not fine is 1, especially as the information thus presented on Wikipedia can not be relied upon, and may, in fact, distract readers from finding the correct information on airline or airport websites. Wrong and out of date information is significantly worse than no information. And on Wikipedia it will always be wrong somewhere. Excise it. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:28, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• 4 – These lists encourage users to add unencyclopedic content to articles, in a clear violation of WP:NOTGUIDE. Notable aeronautical routes will be covered in reliable secondary sources, and these can be included in the article body. There is no need to provide a table of potential routes, which is impossible to keep up to date or verify – if a reader wants this information, he's better off calling the relevant aeronautical company. Wikipedia should not try to be something it is not! Yours, &c. RGloucester — ☎ 10:29, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
  • We've already had a major discussion that found a clear consensus that a list of everywhere an airline flies from an airport does not violate WP:NOT, so no, this is not a clear violation. This is false – we have many users who have done a fantastic job keeping these sections up to date, and it is straightforward to verify with timetables, route maps, news, and other sources. It's much more straightforward to simply include all the routes rather than determine what makes specific routes notable and fluff it up with unnecessary text in the body. The encyclopedia has has this for decades now and we are not trying to be something else. — Reywas92^Talk 14:54, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    That RfC was explicitly about the lists in one specific airport article and one specific airline article, and a a recent follow-up RfC found no consensus about its applicability to a broader scope. Rosbif73 (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    If something is not a WP:NOT violation in two articles, and many people explicitly commented (in both original and follow-up RFCs) that it would also not be a WP:NOT violation in other articles other than those two, then it is ludicrous (and at bordering on either bad faith or incompetence. Even if not quite over the line it is extremely close to such) to say that it's presence in a different article of the same type is {{a clear violation of WP:NOTGUIDE}}. It's not impossible that it is actually a violation, but it's unarguably not an unambiguous one. Thryduulf (talk) 16:26, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    "bordering on either bad faith or incompetence" - That's a personal attack which you should withdraw. FOARP (talk) 19:05, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    It really is not. Thryduulf (talk) 19:09, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    No need to withdraw, I am well-known to be incompetent. Please note that I expressed my opinion, based on my reading of the relevant policy, which is my prerogative. I do not think there is any benefit to Wikipedia hosting this information. Yours, &c. RGloucester — ☎ 21:49, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    Your having that interpretation of policy is fine. Your stating or implying that that interpretation is obviously and unarguably correct when multiple good faith editors explicitly disagree with that interpretation and there is a community consensus that your interpretation was incorrect in a directly equivalent case is not fine. Thryduulf (talk) 23:50, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    We're not stupid: The first RFC was an obvious attempt to delete content from not only those articles but identical content from related ones. The follow-up was intended to vacate that clear consensus and a clear majority still said it applied broadly. — Reywas92^Talk 20:31, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

• 4 or at least 3 - Wikipedia is not a catalogue, guide, or resource for conducting business. Articles should be summaries of what secondary sources say about a topic, not exhaustive lists of every single aspect of something regardless of significance. FOARP (talk) 10:59, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
  • It's a good thing then that these are simple summaries that are merely names of connected airports then, and not exhaustive lists with every single aspect like what days and times the routes are flown and what aircraft are used or how long they've been flying them. No one's conducting business with this, and I think it is significant as to what airlines operate at an airport and what routes are served. — Reywas92^Talk 14:56, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    " simple summaries that are merely names of connected airports" - and the airlines that fly them (so if more than one airline flies it, it gets listed multiple times), and whether they are "seasonal" and the date when future routes will begin (to the specific day), and whether they are "passenger" or "cargo". And if you doubt that all this is standard practise, that is exactly how Heathrow Airport#Airlines and destinations is written. FOARP (talk) 19:04, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    This is irrelevant nibbling at the edges. If you want seasonal routes rolled into the indefinite routes or not to give announced starting/ending routes, that doesn't require deleting the tables as a whole. Obviously passenger and cargo routes are different. — Reywas92^Talk 20:35, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

    There are whole airports that operate only seasonally, and I'd think that would be a key fact to know about them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

    ”Foo Airport only operates seasonally” is not hard to say in prose. FOARP (talk) 05:01, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

• A variation of 23, as smaller airports should have a complete list, but the largest airports should just summarise, as the list would be too big and too hard to maintain. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:03, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Isn't your "variation of 2" equivalent to the proposed option 3? Rosbif73 (talk) 10:26, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  You are right 3 is closer to what I want. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:56, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  The existing lists at large airports are maintained perfectly well at the moment, so your !vote seems to be based on an incorrect premise. Thryduulf (talk) 12:00, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I beg to differ. Even for relatively "large" airports, some lists are far better maintained than others, and even among the well maintained ones the sourcing often leaves much to be desired. Rosbif73 (talk) 12:44, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 - There is nothing wrong with these destination lists. For the most part, they are well source, and accurate.Thenoflyzone (talk) 17:40, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
• 3 – The idea is that articles should include destination lists when they are a main part of an airport's notability. Usually that means small airports. In the case of a huge airport, Heathrow, JFK, Narita, etc, it is notable that they have flights to and from zillions of places, and statistics would be nice, but the minutiae of which actual destinations they serve is not notable. Zero^talk 07:19, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
• first 3, second 4 We here at Wikipedia should not help people with their itenerary directly. Only include lists if they are actually relevant, and don't use just tables, explain why the route merits a mention. Why are y'all using Wikipedia of all things to check airport destinations? Shouldn't their website or a flight booker be enough? Also some people here have argued with an WP:ILIKEIT argument which is a terrible argument. ~2025-31733-18 (talk) 19:17, 13 December 2025 (UTC)
  • "I like it" and "I use it" are actually *great* reasons to include information – we're not talking about standalone articles here. I think it is very relevant that Delta Airlines serves a variety of small regional airports from its hub in Atlanta, even if people don't write lengthy news articles about them. Each one of these routes deserve a mention, even if we don't write harder-to-read paragraphs on them, because they connect people and communities. Just because you aren't part of "y'all" here does not mean the rest of us can't learn about transportation networks this way. Clearly you don't understand this topic, because no, the airline's website is not enough, since in many cases they don't have an easy-to-read list or map organized by route. Not to mention that's there's a lot of Wikipedia content that's simple duplication of official website, so it's pretty risible to think that's an excuse to remove it here, with its wikilinks and consistent organization. — Reywas92^Talk 21:39, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

    Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. If you really like collections of destinations, go over to WikiTravel and add destination lists. That is the appropriate place for those, not an encyclopedia. If they really deserve a mention, elaborate why, don't just handwave it as automatic. We should prioritize WP:V and WP:N rather than 'useful info' otherwise we aren't an encyclopedia, we would be a guide/database ~2025-31733-18 (talk) 08:42, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

    And these are verifiable, so WP:V is prioritized. We are not talking about standalone articles, so WP:N is irrelevant. Something being related to the concept of travel does not make it a travel guide or forbidden from inclusion. Wikitravel does not have this because it's not actually relevant as a travel guide. — Reywas92^Talk 17:05, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

    Verifiable? Probably, but most of the destination lists are completely unsourced potential WP:SYNTHs. I find your assertion of destination lists not being part of travel guides while simultaneously saying they are useful because they help you plan trips (which is the purpose of a travel guide btw) preposterous. ~2025-31733-18 (talk) 17:59, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

    I will reply here, as an ardent proponent of curtailing these lists - almost all are at least partially sourced with reliable sources, and there are a fair few that are fully and well sourced too. We can't say that most are completely unsourced. And when I say reliable sources here, I mean SIRS sources. However, there is definitely an issue with verifying continuity of a route - they're announced, but then there's nothing to state they continue. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 18:03, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

    Though there's usually a newspaper article when a route is discontinued, it's pretty easy to check Google Flights or Kayak or any number of sources to make sure we haven't missed any changes. -- Beland (talk) 18:44, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

    I think this is one of the key sources of disputes over which sources are best. We can give traditional (e.g., news) sources for the start of a route, but some websites/non-traditional sources are actually quicker for determining whether the information is still true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

    You don't need reliable sources to remove content, so removing discontinued routes isn't as a major issue. 4300streetcar (talk) 05:42, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

• 1 or 2. This information has encyclopedic value, and is small enough to include (even if we have to make separate pages for large airports). I have used this information to help plan trips, and also when examining public policy issues. For example, the rules for intrastate vs. interstate routes in the US are different, and this has been a political issue in Texas. There are also important questions in immigration policy and domestic immigration law enforcement which are informed by knowing which countries have flights to specific airports. Changes to this information is always newsworthy enough to make the headlines on our local NPR station, so its value seems to be supported by reliable sources. -- Beland (talk) 00:43, 14 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 or 2. As a person who constantly browse articles on Wikipedia, it is quite important for me to visually see data rather than reading long prose that are sometimes not as comprehensive as a list or table (because of painstaking listing of everything in a paragraph type). This is especially true if you are travelling, as articles in airports come in handy in last minute or emergency situations where you need to have accessible, easily understandable data fast. Where this destination lists are not well-sourced, editors should not remove them but instead put appropriate tags, or better yet, find reliable sources and add them. Most often, these list, while within articles are what I would look at first rather than the wordings of the articles itself, if these are the data I was particularly trying to find. This is true not just on airport/destination articles, but on any articles where visual cue is easily reliable than the wordings itself. This is the essence of taxobox or infobox. Jp2593 (talk) 11:58, 14 December 2025 (UTC)
• 3 or 4 A general overview in prose is good and enclyclopedic info. A list of all destinations is not enclyclopedic. BTW having 5 choices presents some math issues. The "should not have such lists" view is divided between 3 different alternatives. The close should interpret such things. North8000 (talk) 21:36, 15 December 2025 (UTC)
• 3 or 4 per WP:NOT, per Masem, and per WP:CONSENSUS. WP:NOT guides us to write encyclopedic articles in prose, and discourages directory-style lists and indiscriminate databases. #3 and #4 are the only approaches consistent with WP:NOT. Options 1 and 5 prevent us from reaching a WP:CONSENSUS. I also reject the framing of this RFC that presents #1 as existing policy when WP:NOT is core. Even if you disagree, the most you could say is that we are inconsistent. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:34, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

  The existing consensus is that these lists explicitly do not violate WP:NOT You may disagree with that consensus, but that does not mean it does not exist or that it is incorrect. Thryduulf (talk) 16:58, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

  You're incorrect, or misunderstanding my point about WP:NOT. It quite literally says:

  • An article should not be a complete presentation of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject.
  • Wikipedia is not a directory of everything in the universe that exists or has existed
  • Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources.

  Which informs our guide on lists, particularly MOS:USEPROSE. Once again, you can disagree with the application of Wikipedia policy, but at most that means Wikipedia is inconsistent. You can't declare your own consensus when WP:NOT is very clear here. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:20, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

  And this was already extensively discussed at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not, which found clear consensus that this was not a NOT violation. This is not "[his] own consensus", and it's simply incorrect to assert that WP:NOT is clear here. A simple list of destinations is not "all possible details" nor is it indiscriminate. There would need to be a new clear consensus to delete this longstanding content – the fact that some people disagree with practice does not mean that a supposed compromose position that deletes only some of the content is the actual consensus. — Reywas92^Talk 19:00, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

  False. This WP:CONSENSUS close literally says there was no "clear consensus" to override WP:NOT. The point of this RFC is to find a consensus, not to jam up discussion in hopes that "no consensus" favors one position. Shooterwalker (talk) 21:15, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

  • Option 4 As an encyclopedia, we should use prose to describe the significance of the article subject (in this case, the airport), and that includes the routes that fly into and out of it. A big chart or table or list doesn't explain much about the airport. It doesn't indicate that it is a hub for X airline, or that it is the major hub serving all of X area, or that it is a regional airport mostly sending and recieving flights from Y hub. It doesn't explain that the addition of the A to B route in 1987 led to an economic boom, or the elimination of the C to D route in 2013 caused a local recession. Routes are ephermal, and presenting them in a table format can cause headaches as editors are constantly needing to update the table to keep it current, and it also leads to the loss of significant information as major route changes have significant real world impacts which are not described in the article, instead vanishing from the article just as they vanished in real life. We do our readers a disservice by presenting information in this format. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:45, 17 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 as first choice, option 4 as second choice. One of the biggest issues with lists of destinations at larger airports is that they change with relative frequency, requiring constant review to ensure it is accurate. A tiny airport with only a few destinations is not likely to experience much change in that list, so a table is fine but replacing it with prose is also just as good. However, a larger airport served by dozens of airlines with scores of destinations should simply have a prose statement, such as:

Washington Dulles International Airport serves as a major hub for United Airlines with more than 60 domestic and international destinations. As of December 2025, there are also 42 other airlines serving dozens of additional destinations, some of which are also served by United.

The list for Dulles requires editing today because a new flight route has begun, and again on December 20 when two more flight routes begin, and again on...etc. Dulles is only the 24th‑busiest US airport, and not even close to being one of the busiest in the world, so I can only imagine how frequently the destination lists for ATL or LHR require updating.

Option 1 is untenable, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. I don't see these lists being notable enough to qualify for their own articles, as there is not the required WP:SIGCOV. Press releases stating the addition or ending of routes are WP:ROUTINE announcements and usually go unnoticed by the media at large. Therefore, option 2 is not viable. Not talking at all about the airlines or destinations is a bit counter-intuitive to an article about an airport with scheduled passenger and/or cargo service, so option 5 is also not viable. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 18:07, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1. Listing each destination, especially in conjunction with the airlines that serve those destinations, demonstrate the size and scale of these airports well. Just saying how many destinations leaves a lot of vague, open-ended answers. It appears that we have many users who care about this and are willing to put in the time and effort to keep these lists up to date, especially with larger airports. As for smaller regional airports, that could be a separate discussion, as the only routes from most regional airports are to nearby hubs and that could easily be summarized in one sentence -- essentially, for smaller airports, the rationale for option 5 is sufficient. I'll point you all to flightconnections.com, which shows accurate up-to-date maps of where you can fly from any given airport. Could this serve as the one source every airport article needs? Thanks Reywas92 (talk · contribs) for the ping. –Aaronw1109 ^{(talk) (contribs)} 18:49, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

  Seconding option 1. In addition, I think we should cite primary sources including airlines because virtually all "secondary" sources use information given to them from the airlines whether via press release or via their schedule updates. I also propose that longstanding flights, says British Airways' JFK to LHR route, have operated so long, they no need individual citation and that any route operating more than a year should not need one either. That would significantly improve readability and reduce page length. Zackrules90 (talk) 03:12, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

  As I said in my original post, this particular RfC is explicitly not about sourcing requirements, and it’s my intent to have a second RfC about sourcing should it be decided to retain the lists. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 08:47, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1 or 2 (it makes little difference to me) but none of the other options. There’s truly no other option whatsoever in my mind. I could go into detail and rehash what all ‘option 1’ voters have already said, but there’s no need. All I will say is this; As someone who somewhat regularly updates these airport tables with sourced content (always) whenever I happen to notice an error or omission, this sort of content is what I believe Wikipedia is at its core. It might seem an over exaggeration to some, but to me, this would be the start of a slippery slope into a loss of usefulness and enjoyment and a loss of the truly unlimited potential and nature of Wikipedia. This is what Wikipedia was MADE for. FlyingScotsman72 (talk) 01:06, 19 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 as needed. It is patently absurd to not have coverage of the main purpose of an airport (for most people) in an article about the airport. In the US and Canada, the addition of new routes at airports of all sizes is covered in local media and other secondary sources that can easily replace the primary sources (which aren't outright banned by policy, but editors seem to forget that). There is no shortage of coverage about airline strategy with regards to how destinations from hubs are chosen, so clearly the subject is notable and worth covering. SounderBruce 20:50, 19 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 which has served well for many years. The lists are going to be dynamic with frequent changes, but this is the clearest way to present the airports' connectivities. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:04, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 and perhaps Option 5. For larger airports, a brief mention of the major destinations and airports is appropriate. For all others, unless it's notable, there should be no need to mention destinations. Some airports, at least in the USA where there is a subsidy to operate there due to Essential Air Service. In that case, it might be notable to mention the airline or route. In other cases there should be no reason to have a directory of airlines and routes. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 01:17, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1. This information is easily verifiable. The connectivity of an airport is an important piece of information about the airport, as it gives information about the role that the airport plays in the aviation network. There doesn't seem to be a serious issue with keeping them up to date. A prose description replacement would likely be vague, containing less information and being more difficult to interpret. CapitalSasha ~ talk 01:29, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2/3. Split large tables into standalone list pages, retaining only a brief prose summary on the main article. Not a table! This is basically what we do with all other lists that get too large. Toadspike [Talk] 12:09, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

random break for editing convenience

• 1 or 2 These lists are part of the topic and are what most users would use for, most people depend on these lists because flying to somewhere is the point for airports, and also per SportingFlyer and Amakuru. Metrosfan (talk) 11:20, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• somewhere between4 and 5 -- Something like "Squortly Airport provides flights to cities in 83 countries" is valid. In the Kearney Regional Airport example, all that needs to be said is that it only provides service to Denver. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:18, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1, possibly 2 -- In addition to everything said above, putting this stuff in prose is going to result in clunky prose. Gnomingstuff (talk) 15:38, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• Not 5. Small commercial airports with only one possible destination should mention this, since it's an important aspect of the airport that's routinely familiar to locals and significant to travellers from elsewhere. My previous city's airport has flown only to one other airport for a long time, and this situation has routinely occupied the attention of city officials and other local residents; the mere fact of a second airline with additional destinations is a significant development that deserves some mention in the history section, e.g. once it happens, "For decades [obviously this is vague, but I don't know when previous services ended], Lynchburg's only commercial service was American Airlines flights to Charlotte, but United Airlines added flights to DC and Chicago in 2026". It would be preposterous to enact a 100% ban on any references to this fact. Or, consider a very different airport, Nadi International Airport in Fiji. As the main hub for Fiji Airways, it has service to Australia, New Zealand, the US, and various other major countries, whilst it has few domestic flights because that's the role of Nausori International Airport elsewhere in the country; we ought to be able to mention some of the major destinations (e.g. Melbourne, Auckland, and Los Angeles), and we should note that passengers can fly from Nadi to Nausori if that's the case. (When I encounter big Option 1 tables, and an expected destination is missing, I'm always uncertain if the table is incomplete or if that destination isn't really an option.) And it's quite reasonable for the Funafuti International Airport article to say Fiji Airways operates between Suva, Nadi and Funafuti with a citation to the website of the government of Tuvalu. Outright prohibiting any mentions of these facts, regardless of sourcing, would be detrimental to the encyclopedia. Nyttend (talk) 18:53, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1, reject Option 4 and 5. While Option 4/5 makes sense for huge airports with many destinations, such as London Heathrow or Charlotte Douglas International Airport, option 4 and 5 will create huge problems for really small airports that have one or two destinations or flights. For Charlotte airports a flight to Kansas City may not be very notable for both airports, but for Singkawang Airport or Frans Xavier Seda Airport the mention of the flights serving them is notable. I have noticed as well that these routes are updated very frequently. Even non-American airports such as Chinggis Khaan International Airport are updated quite promptly. ✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 01:52, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
• 3 or 4 The massive tables are very hard to keep accurate, changes happen quite often for auxiliary destinations with less than daily service especially in growing areas or for seasonal flights. A narrative description keeps the information that fits what Wikipedia can provide: for small airports, it could be as simple as "Frog Town Airport only has daily service to New Frog City", for medium airports it could expand to say "New Frog City Airport has seasonal service to numerous Warm Coast destinations", and further expansion for the massive hubs of the world. If you need a complete up to the minute guide of flight destinations, there are other websites for this, as well as any booking site you can muster. And seriously people, option 5 is daft nonsense and you should not be distracted by it. Omnifalcon (talk) 04:05, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  The massive tables are very hard to keep accurate the evidence presented seems to suggest otherwise. Thryduulf (talk) 12:01, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  The issue at hand isn't so much their accuracy, but rather the state of their sourcing. JustARandomSquid (talk) 12:10, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  It's a work in progress since in the past, route-specific sources were typically removed after the route started since there would often be a general timetable source. This isn't particularly difficult to verify. — Reywas92^Talk 14:29, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3 or 4. The attempts at comprehensive lists have historically been magnets for poor sourcing and misbehavior. Prose summaries that detail the key information without trying to be complete, up-to-the-minute lists will still provide most of the useful information while being better able to meet WP:V. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:28, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
• 4, 3, or 5, but I think a better RfC option would be "secondary, independent sources for each entry and/or the list as a whole are required to include an airline destination list". If a full listing is somehow covered in SIRS media, then we shouldn't necessarily prohibit it from being in the article. JoelleJay (talk) 17:03, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  If a full listing is somehow covered in SIRS media I haven't got time to provide a link right now, but it is definitely the case for Westray Airport. Thryduulf (talk) 17:06, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• 0 - none of these options are the right answer. IMO, the closest the community got to the "right answer" was the 2023 RFC, which resulted in consensus that airlines and destination tables may only be included in articles when independent, reliable, secondary sources demonstrate they meet WP:DUE. Closest because it's actually WP:ASPECT, not WP:DUE, that is relevant. But anyway, some routes are significant WP:ASPECTs of airports, and some routes are not. For example, there are airline routes that are independently notable, like Hong Kong-Taipei route, or the Island Hopper; those routes should of course be mentioned in the articles about the airports along those routes. Even if a route isn't notable, it may still be a significant WP:ASPECT of the airport. Articles about airports should mention routes that are significant WP:ASPECTs of the airport according to independent, reliable, secondary sources; it should not list all routes, or no routes. Whether that information takes the format of prose, or a table, or a subpage, would depend, article by article, on how many significant WP:ASPECT routes there are. (Probably not many though.) But if the question is "list all routes" or "list no routes," the answer to both is "no." List some routes, the significant WP:ASPECT routes, and list them in whatever format makes sense for the particular content in question. Levivich (talk) 21:41, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, I don't understand why we are rehashing this as "should airport articles have destination tables or not" rather than "destination tables should only be included when supported by SIRS and BALASP". The RfC is treating this as essentially a "MoS for airport articles" issue rather than addressing the actual problem. I'm now regretting not getting more involved in the pre-RfC discussion... JoelleJay (talk) 17:43, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  The vast majority of airline routes from airports can be cited in one form or another and requiring significant coverage about the route itself in the article about the airport is not consistent with how any other topic on the project is treated. Take a look at the FA George Tucker (author)#Works for example. There's a list there which (a) has numerous entries without Wikipedia articles, suggesting those works themselves aren't notable; and (b) the list as a whole is uncited, meaning this list is something put together by Wikipedians themselves rather than assembled as a whole block somewhere else; the citations are simply the fact that those books exist, and their ISBNs are given so you can find them. WP:LISTN might imply that we can't show any lists that aren't cited in full in an external source, but vast reams of the project, including featured content, don't follow such a rule and in general it's taken as read that LISTN only applies to standalone lists (as its wording says) and not to lists within other articles.  — Amakuru (talk) 18:42, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

  requiring significant coverage about the route itself in the article about the airport is not consistent with how any other topic on the project is treated - well, if you use the term significant coverage, referencing WP:SIGCOV, that's true--SIGCOV is about notability, not about what we include in articles. However, I didn't say "significant coverage," and neither did JJ. We're both pointing to WP:BALASP (aka WP:ASPECT). That's a section of WP:NPOV that is how every other topic on the project is treated. If the only source for a route is the airport's own website, and none of the other sources about the airport mention the route (particularly independent secondary reliable sources), then the route probably isn't going to meet the WP:BALASP test (An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject ...) and shouldn't be included in the Wikipedia article about the airport. And I totally reject any kind of analogy between an artist's works and an airport's destinations. A closer analogy might be a company and its products, and we don't list all the products in company articles. (Or at least we shouldn't; some companies, like Microsoft, have a veritable product catalogue on Wikipedia.) Levivich (talk) 22:24, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

• 4, or 5 or 3 - There are too many problems with destination lists, mainly that they change frequently, and that there are frequent disputes about the acceptability of the sources. The way to minimize disputes about lists of airline destinations is to avoid having lists of airline destinations. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:49, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  For huge airports such as Atlanta Airport route changes might be too trivial or not very important, but for smaller airports such as Miangas Airport or David Constantijn Saudale Airport the information about the routes is very important. For smaller airports the status of the flight to the mainland is very notable, less so in big airports. ✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 07:40, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  Both of which small airports have a table with exactly one entry. That should be in prose. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:19, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  Why? Thryduulf (talk) 11:31, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  Because a reader is better served by readable prose rather than table stuff. Especially as a single entry table does not need a table. Tabular information is presented in that format to allow a reader to make quick connections between different data. They should not be used merely for presentation purposes and they present user accessibility issues when used. Here there is no different data to connect. The only possible purpose of a table is obviated by the fact it is a single entry. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:42, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 existing seems fine, but 2 is possible too. LibStar (talk) 22:20, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
• 2 because we don't want to overwhelm articles, but I don't see how that's any different from how we treat long articles now, so I'd be fine with option 1 as well. I believe destination lists are a point of interest for our readers, and I'm surprised to see people arguing that the need to update them is a problem—collaboratively updating things is a core part of why Wikipedia is a top-ten website. In addition, the other options are unpalatable. With option 3 or 4, I can't see how something like the Heathrow Airport destinations example could be covered in prose in a way that's actually easier for readers to understand. The tables are just far more easily parsed, especially for people conditioned to short-form content. Option 5 is completely unworkable.
  I was also influenced by Thryduulf's well-argued !vote above, WhatamIdoing's very cogent points throughout this RfC, and Andrew Davidson's point below about why airports exist: "Destinations are not miscellaneous; they are the fundamental raison d'etre of an airport." (Admittedly a few people have made a similar point, but this was the most quotable.) Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 18:31, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

  What about situations where the entire table is only supported by primary, non-independent sources? If a complete list of destinations is so important to understanding the airport, why wouldn't this be reflected in SIRS sources? JoelleJay (talk) 17:42, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

  Local news coverage of changes in airline service from a particular airport (e.g. for my local airport in Boston, JetBlue announcing new routes for 2026, Hawaiian Airlines cancelling its route to Hawaii) is pretty common, as it's notable for the local population. I don't think complete destination lists are common in SIRS, due to how frequently things change. 4300streetcar (talk) 05:54, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

• Option 3 per nominator. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 21:44, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
• My preference is either 2 or 3. Regarding option 2, I think that a hatnote and prose summary would be better; having "smaller" destination tables sounds like it would be susceptible to mission creep. For anyone who hasn't read the saga over at Village pump (policy)/Airport destination lists (understandable—it's enormous) I'll copy my main points over:

• being presented with a table full of, essentially, raw data is the opposite what an encyclopaedia should be doing, which is summarising the information.
• I guarantee that the information in the tables can be summarised in prose format, because I do exactly that almost every time I write a technical report.
• Some articles (Darwin International Airport for example) already have most of that info in prose form anyway, it's just been put in the History section instead of the Airports and destinations section.

Final note: one of my problems with the tables is that when I see the heading "Airlines and destinations" I expect to find (1) the airlines that service the airport, and (2) the destinations that someone could travel to. Tabulating the information into "Airline A goes to X, Y, and Z. Airline B goes to X and Y. Airline C goes to X, Y, and Z. Airline D goes to X. Airline E … etc etc" instead of "Airlines A, B, C, and D service the airport" and "The destinations are X, Y, and Z" is just annoying to read. (Me: Okay, okay! You can fly from the airport to destination X, I got that the first time.) In short, there's a lot of repeated information, and it feels really inefficient. ―Tosca-the-engineer (talk) 13:34, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

For one, it's much easier to collate and track the information when it's organized by airline and destination together, and two, that can show the significance of a route if multiple airlines serve it, as well as how airlines use the airport for different types of flights. It's simply not true that most of the information at even Darwin International Airport is already in prose form. The History section mentions some international routes, the ones most likely to have recent news coverage, but it doesn't mention the larger number of shorter regional routes. It's quite relevant that the airport serves these small communities across northern Australia even if editors haven't included that in the history. I can't overstate how much of a nightmare implementation would be if this were closed as option 3 as some sort of compromise against the truly absurd 4 and 5 – we're going to see huge amounts of content simply deleted without adequate summaries having been written. Just because a summary could be written doesn't mean they will be (not to mention the rest of your report is still there). — Reywas92^Talk 17:19, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2 or option 3 would get my vote. I think that this information is matters more on the articles for smaller airports, as they are often notable because of the regions and destinations that they serve (maintained either in prose or as a list, depending on what makes sense for the editors working on the article). The lists are very tedious on the articles of larger airports, but I would be fine with the tediousness being kept on their own pages. --Gurkubondinn (talk) 11:32, 17 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1, oppose option 3, 4 and 5. Opposing options 3 and 4 because it risks synthesizing published material. Rejecting option 5 because the wording is simply ridiculous. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:18, 18 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 Airports receive a large amount of coverage, especially in the local press, regarding the routes they operate. It would be a violation of WP:DUE to declare inclusion of this coverage unencyclopedic. Option 2 is undesirable, as it is unclear whether WP:NLIST and related notability guidelines are satisfied by these tables. Kelob2678 (talk) 18:31, 18 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 (with 2 being ok per WP:SUMMARY). This is one of those things that people keep trying to get rid of with that has never had consensus to remove. It's crossing int WP:DROPTHESTICK territory. oknazevad (talk) 19:59, 18 December 2025 (UTC)
• 5. Per WP:WHATISTOBEDONE. Encyclopedias contain historical summaries, they are not directories etc etc. This is a policy and if we want to keep these lists then we must first update our policy. Unless and until that happens, airline articles should include discussion of a destination only if it has verifiable significance to the history of the airport in its own right, e.g. "the first to serve Calcutta" or whatever. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:39, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Steelpillow Option 5 is all information about destinations reachable from an airport should be excluded so is not compatible with airline articles should include discussion of a destination only if it has verifiable significance to the history of the airport in its own right as that is "information about a destination reachable from the airport". Your view, if I've understood it correctly, is that these articles should have a prose summary of significant routes (if any exist at that airport), which to me feels like it falls squarely between option 4 (all articles should have a prose summary of routes) and option 5 (no prose or table about destinations). Thryduulf (talk) 20:51, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, consider it caveated or 5b or [other] or whatever, as you see fit. Many of us here are offering more nuanced proposals than the listed options allow. 5 is closer to our policy than any of the others. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:02, 20 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Steelpillow, it looks like you have answered a question that isn't relevant. You've written about "airline articles". This RFC is about Airports. The relevant question here is what should go in (e.g.,) Kearney Regional Airport#Passenger. The question is not what should go in List of British Airways destinations.

  I wonder how many other editors made the same mistake. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:49, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for calling me out, glad someone's awake. I first wrote "airports" then had a head fit and foolishly edited my initial comment to "airlines". I have now reverted it. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:39, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 with the caveat that every destination should be cited, even if to a primary/non-independent source (i.e. the airline). Using primary sources for these tables is acceptable per WP:PRIMARY (especially point 3). Using non-independent sources for this purpose is acceptable per WP:SELFSOURCE. Of course, if independent sources exist, even better. Just cite everything. mdm.bla 18:43, 19 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 or 2 — Transportation occurs as a network linking destinations and this is straightforward descriptive information. Tabular information is preferable to prose because of information density. I acknowledge that current information changes, but that doesn't change the usefulness or relevance of this information. If anything, I would argue that maintaining a separate list of previously served destinations would also be appropriate, using option 2 when necessary to deal with length issues.--Carwil (talk) 19:59, 19 December 2025 (UTC)
• 3/4 > 1 > 2 > 5 Option 3/4 has the lowest maintenance burden (for larger airports, using prose means we don't need to update a table after every timetable change, smaller airports change less frequently so either prose or a table would be fine). Option 1 is fine as well given it's worked up until now. I don't think we are at the level where we need to WP:SIZESPLIT, and I strongly oppose 5 as it provides no flexibility at all and for smaller airports the destinations are significantly more important. Jumpytoo Talk 01:42, 20 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1, with the understanding that the information presented in the tables needs to be verifiable. When reading an article about an airport, I find these tables helpful for understanding how the airport and its operations fit in to the broader air transportation network. I think a table is easier to read than prose would be for this purpose. If these tables are sometimes too large, I would prefer collapsing them by default on articles where that is the case, rather than creating a separate page. --Opus 113 (talk) 18:50, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Opus 113, do you actually mean "verifiable", using the definition of verifiability in Wikipedia:Verifiability, which specifies that "A fact or claim is "verifiable" if a reliable source that supports it could be cited, even if there is no citation for it in the article at the moment"? Or do you mean "already WP:Glossary#cited"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 per SportingFlyer. -- Tavix ^(talk) 01:24, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1. Information is useful, relevant, and easily verifiable. OK with 2 as second choice. This has served well for many years. And then a long moratorium (e.g. 5 years) on this topic being relitigated. Stifle (talk) 09:05, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
• 3 or 2, slightly prefer 3-- i am mostly concerned that the very long tables that have constant changes by design make it difficult for people to other people to keep on top of the airport articles. It discourages people from following the articles if they aren't interested in the destinations list, and buries things in the article history very quickly. Secondary concern regarding notability of facts-- generally if something is notable, it remains notable as a historical fact even when no longer currently true, so it's a little odd that the standard here is to simply delete things when they are no longer up to date. But this is a minor concern and I wouldn't really mind the lists if they stop dominating the article history tioseafj (talk) 08:49, 26 December 2025 (UTC)
• 3; 4 isn't necessary but also not wrong: For the same reason we don't list all the books being sold at a given moment by a particular notable bookstore. For the same reason that articles on notable restaurants don't list the entirety of their menu offerings, tracking daily or weekly updates, with columns denoting which items are gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, or inclusive of raw or undercooked meats or seafood. I'd go so far to say that for major airports, it would be comparable to doing likewise in the article about Times Square for all the notable restaurants in Times Square. Eventually we get to a level of detail that people should look for it at the source's website rather than in an encyclopedia. Largoplazo (talk) 17:41, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

• 1 I see nothing wrong with the inclusion of this information and think the insistance on 3rd party coverge based on policy regarding primary sources is not in line with actual policy on primary sources at WP:PSTS or the explanatory essay Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources. Not including this information because of a misguided attempt at a religious avoidance of primary sources is getting in the way of building an encyclopedia. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 17:47, 27 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1, subject to size-based splitting and normal (not enhanced) sourcing requirements, for reasons most clearly articulated by Thryduulf and Reywas92. I don't edit in this area at all so I'm speaking from the perspective of a reader here. This information is useful and an inherent component of what an airport is. It's not the kind of information where the use of primary sources is a problem. I'm not convinced by the comments in this discussion that including this information in articles actually causes any real problems. Bytes are cheap, and tables can be split into their own articles or even made collapsible if screen space is a concern. It's true that information can fall out of date, but that's true of literally all information on this wiki. If there are editors who find it fun to track down sources for this kind of information and include it in articles, I say let them have at it. This ultimately feels like a WP:ONEQUESTION situation. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 16:16, 29 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1, ambivalent about details, but preserve information above all else. Benjamin (talk) 06:35, 30 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 As others have mentioned, transportation fundamentally concerns the connection of two or more places. The destinations, in my mind, are the most notable information in these articles. None of the other options for communicating this essential information is as clear.Mpgviolist (talk) 04:08, 31 December 2025 (UTC)
• 1 or 2 with mandatory {{As of}} tags - I'm fairly convinced by arguments that the destinations that an airport is connected to is the point of an airport, with the only major concern being keeping the tables up to date. Destinations are inherently notable; local news coverage of route additions/discontinuations is very common. That being said, perhaps mandatory use of {{as of}} tags or similar should be used to denote when the table was last updated, to warn readers if they may be out of date. From a quick look, airport articles do not regularly use these tags. Some airports may have a regular army of editors keeping the table up-to-date; other airports may not, and it should be clear to readers when the list was last updated. 4300streetcar (talk) 06:00, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1. No change, keep the lists for now. Per my Wikidata idea below. --Commander Keane (talk) 06:45, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
• Option 4 secondary sources don't treat an entire list of airplane destinations as something pertinent about an airport. Traumnovelle (talk) 18:53, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
• 4/5. The WikiProject's vision is to make all information accessible. But Wikipedia is not the only project; information like this should be kept to its respective project (WikiVoyage). However, if it benefits the article, I believe this should be included, so long as it doesn't break prose. ~2025-43595-04 (talk) 10:14, 3 January 2026 (UTC)
• 1 (summoned by SodiumBot). I don't see a big enough problem to warrant creating a new rule on this, so per WP:CREEP, I would favour just focusing on what constitutes good sourcing and significance. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:11, 4 January 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1. We literally just had this type of discussion a few months ago, yet here we are again. I would argue that Wikidata is a better place for this type of information. But until then, it should stay as-is. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:59, 5 January 2026 (UTC)
• Wikidata, then 1, then 2 Wikipedia prose will never be suitable for managing this kind and amount of information, but Wikidata is. I would not compel any Wikipedia editor to edit Wikidata at this time, but now is the time for Wikipedia editors to encourage great respect for the idea of managing all datasets such as these in Wikidata, rather than as prose. This is not just an English Wikipedia challenge, and airport data is urgently needed in all languages, so solutions which only serve English Wikipedia long term are unacceptable. Wikidata is the way to share the data across languages and maintain data quality at scale. Because of all the constraints and infrastructure we have right now, support option 1 by default. Because it is unwieldy to have long lists of destinations, as with Heathrow, then I encourage editors to be open minded to splitting off long lists into stand-alone articles as with option 2, but I want to be clear in saying that option 1 should be the undisputed default. If clear heads all agree that option 1 is the default, then case by case, I encourage conversations on splitting off long-lists which is also acceptable and can be better for managing long lists with many different citations. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:06, 6 January 2026 (UTC)
• 2 or 3, not 5: I don't edit in this space frequently and this is my feeling. The destination lists for large airports like London Heathrow or Atlanta are very large, challenging to navigate on mobile, and overshadow the other content. This feels better suited as a separate page. Smaller airports do not seem to have as much trouble and may be notable because of their destinations. I am indifferent on Option 4 and oppose option 5. If Wikidata can serve this purpose, I support that. —🌊PacificDepths (talk) 05:40, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
• Option 4. The lists look to me like collections of transient data that don't belong in a tertiary source like Wikipedia. Readers can go to a website such as Flightconnections.com to find this information. I concur with Masem's points above. Sunnya343 (talk) 22:43, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1. I've lost track how many times we have had this discussion and, yet, there's never been a good reason given to me why removing key details about airports serves Wikipedia in regards to option 5. I'm aware deleting detailed information is the trend as of late, but nonetheless, I do not support this. Options like 2 make this information less clearly communicated and if space is the issue people have, the tables are collapsible so I don't see that as a good reason. Option 5 ends up being removing important details about an important for the sake of "pruning" our articles. I tend to hold a high bar for the deletion of large chunks of information from Wikipedia and so too do I here. To me deletion of information should be clearly an inmprovement to wikipedia and that bar is not met here. Options 3 and 4 would make the information less clear and lead to airports having paragraphs of repetitive and unecessary text to sort though. For someone who is visually impaired like me, the table is much easier for me to find the information I need and I believe this is often a missed consideration with the removal of tables and templates. I will say that I am open to option 2 as I think it still is preferable to outright deleting information to make our articles shorter, as happened with specification information for airliners and as 5 proposes, but my preference is still Option 1. --Lj123 (talk) 02:59, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Discussion (airports)

• I hope editors don't mind, but I've added bullets to our comments - something I should have done myself when I first added my own vote. Feel free to revert if you disagree with their use :-)
  Also, I've notified (or rather am in the process of notifying) those editors that were involved in the original VPP discussion and the closed RfC at WP:NOT. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 21:03, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  An interesting note: so far only the “pro-table” group is ignoring the “Discussion” section and posting direct responses to Option 3/4/5 votes. ~2025-39329-03 (talk) 13:03, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  Can't lie, not sure what you're trying to say there. JustARandomSquid (talk) 13:18, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Danners430, nice job with the RfC. I’m glad you proceeded with one question. Well done. Dw31415 (talk) 17:57, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• So, Amakuru, you're openly acknowledging that you're using and supporting these lists as a itinerary and travel guide, in specific opposition to WP:NOTGUIDE? I'm saying they're unencyclopedic because they are explicitly, directly spelled out to be against policy. Silverseren^C 21:12, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
  • This is such an absurd statement. I used Asheville, North Carolina#Arts and culture and List of tourist attractions in Philadelphia to plan travel, but that doesn't mean this is a forbidden travel guide and needs to be deleted. Why would we remove information that is actually informing people? No, policy does not directly spell out that a list of airline routes is forbidden, just like London King's Cross railway station#Services and Euston railway station#National Rail services and London Overground aren't forbidden, even if I could use that in understanding how travel in London works, even my own trip there! Heck, those even say the trains' frequency (tph), something we don't do with airlines. I'm openly acknowledging that as I plan my next trip to Spain, I'm using Port of Barcelona#Passenger ferries to understand that I can take a ferry to Mallorca – are you going to try to get that deleted next? Reywas92^Talk 15:07, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  Did you miss the part where I said "as an aside"? Yes, (also as an aside) I'm pissed off that a useful feature I use all the time is going to be ditched because a bunch of Wikpedians such as yourself have nothing better to do than moan about how you think they're travel guide fodder. But that isn't the reason why I !voted the way I did. I did so because knowing which destinations an airport can be reached from is vital to understanding that airport in its totality. In the same way that a football team might have a table listing past championships it's won or an author might have a bibliography table telling you which books they wrote.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:18, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  And that information is much better represented in prose both in context and in relation to the airport itself. Just having a gigantic list of destinations doesn't actually serve readers to understand what that means in relation to the airport. Having it instead presented as a generalized overview throughout the history of the airport serves our readers much better for their understanding of said airport's past and current status. Silverseren^C 21:22, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  What would you do with this "gigantic list", then? It's from Durango–La Plata County Airport#Airlines and destinations:

References

I'm on the fence about whether it's better to replace it with two sentences or to leave it alone, but I don't consider it to be inherently problematic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Seems easy enough to explain the content in a paragraph of prose. No reason why that wouldn't be simple enough to do? And obviously the issue is the many much, much longer lists. Silverseren^C 21:33, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

So you don't object to including the facts? It's just the formatting that bothers you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Prose is far better here particularly for a small regional airport. "Durango is served by American and United Airlines, connecting to DFW, Denver. Phoenix, and seasonal flights to Houston" Masem (t) 21:33, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

This is contradictory to your vote above. What if one of these airlines changes their routes on a whim? I would rather see a consistent format of organized infomation rather than creating inconsistency between large and small airports. — Reywas92^Talk 15:40, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

No it's not. The sourcing given appears to be all independent, third party sources so fully covering the options from a small regional airport makes sense. If a route used to be served but now gone, as documented by sources, that can be added too. Where the problem is more apparent is large airports where there are dozens of possible destinations. With a larger airport it will probably discuss the possible destinations at the summary level grouped by airline. Basically we look to sources to determine where the summary will be. Masem (t) 05:20, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing - thank you for that example, I think we should keep in mind that vastly more situations are smaller airports. And if I look at List of airports in the Greater Toronto Area, the situation for Toronto Pearson International Airport is different than Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, and much lesser for Brampton-Caledon Airport. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 20:59, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it's left-tailed distribution. The complaints focus on a handful of very large airports, but there are thousands of smaller airports. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:09, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

I said that too in my vote. I generally think these lists are ok, but I wouldn't stand in the way of deleting the very largest of them (the top 20, maybe), the ones that change the most and are hardest to source properly. JustARandomSquid (talk) 22:00, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

@Silver seren, that's a weird way to express your disagreement. It sounds like you're claiming that NOTGUIDE is telling readers (including readers who edit) that they're not supposed to be "using" Wikipedia for whatever purpose they want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm saying that, per policy, the lists are unencyclopedic. And statements of them being necessary because they're used as travel guides just exemplifies the point that they were unencyclopedic. Silverseren^C 21:33, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

The same editor used Asheville, North Carolina#Arts and culture and List of tourist attractions in Philadelphia to plan some travel. Are those unencylopedic, too? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:09, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

WP:NOTGUIDE says an article on Paris should mention landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but not the telephone numbers or street addresses of the "best" restaurants, nor the current price of a café au lait on the Champs-Élysées. For an airport, the destinations that it serves seem like landmark-level info. The policy is against finer detail such as the price and quality of its coffee. If it's long-standing practice to list destinations then this is clearly acceptable information in this context. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:29, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

By that same argument, would you claim WP:NOTTVGUIDE isn't meant to apply to lists of all shows every day, all events ever held, and for other subjects, all products down to every version? The issue here discussed in both sections and in NOT as a whole is that arguments of every single destination being major don't hold water. Our lists are meant to be general overviews that are largely stable information. Occasional changes to what material is included happen, but they shouldn't be on a daily or weekly basis. A list that is inherently meant to be covering material that will be very constantly and forever changing (and not simply in the practice of occasionally adding a new line/entry such as a new year's result) are unencyclopedic. That is not the sort of information Wikipedia is meant to be covering. Silverseren^C 21:40, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

The destinations served by a major airport like Heathrow will be fairly stable -- equivalent places like Paris are always going to be in the list. Broadcast TV schedules seem more ephemeral and so we don't tend to do them. But now that streaming is becoming more dominant, notice that we have lots of Lists of television series by streaming service. These lists will keep expanding as new programming is added but so it goes. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:12, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm OK with the thought a list of 100 might well have an update somewhere in it, even though individually each route is seldom created or removed. That situation seems fairly normal for any list, and the vast majority of airports are small so in general it's not an issue. And any cites for an airport or other transport hub could have the issue that WP:V cites are seldom available so may usually be a bit old. Caveat I recently was at a BLP mentioning the person was 'currently studying for Phd" with a cite from 2014, so my perspective on where 'old' is may be skewed. ;-) Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:26, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Andrew, I believe that back in the day, some of air-travel-related lists had information about flight numbers, airport call signs, etc. In that sense, we've already removed some of the "street address" information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:40, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

• Triptothecottage, WP:TRIVIA doesn't mean what you think. Its nutshell says An article should not contain a list of miscellaneous information. It is better to present things in an organized way. Destinations are not miscellaneous; they are the fundamental raison d'etre of an airport. And putting the information in a systematic table is presenting this in an organized way as the guideline recommends. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:46, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  I disagree with the assertion that destinations are a fundamental raison d’etre of an airport. Airports exist to be a safe and controlled place for planes to take off and land. No more, no less. Where the planes go to (or come from) is a function of the airline, not the airport. Blueboar (talk) 17:27, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

  Airlines are a finer level of detail. For example, London Heathrow's major destinations such as Paris and New York are serviced by multiple airlines. These airlines may vary over time but the destinations will tend to remain the same. So, I'd expect an airport article to list both its airlines and destinations but not to cross-reference these. But Heathrow has a table of airlines and destinations which does show both together. That only seems bloated in the case of British Airways. My view is that, if such information can be presented compactly and is reasonably stable, then it's ok. Both airlines and destinations seem fairly fundamental and so I'd expect an airport article to say something about both. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:37, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

  Food and drink are the fundamental reason for a restaurant, but we don't reproduce and continually update complete lists of all the items on a restaurant's menu with columns indicating which ones are vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, etc. We also don't list every object on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Largoplazo (talk) 18:05, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

  Because media generally doesn't report on new items getting added to restaurant menus, but does report on new routes opening. (The fact editors can't be made to find these reports is a separate issue.) JustARandomSquid (talk) 18:50, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

  But are we talking about media like the ones I see them in—daily emails from local news sources that also announce every day's car accidents, break-ins, restaurant openings and closings, and zoning decisions, none of which are Wikipedia fodder, none of which would be mentioned in articles about my locality? I'd object if someone added to the Arlington, Virginia article a list of all restaurants whose openings have been reported by Arlington Now!. Largoplazo (talk) 19:04, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

  Of course you'd object, but would object if they were added to an article titled 'Cuisine of Arlington, Virginia'? Because I feel like that's more analogous to an airport and it's destinations. Just asking. JustARandomSquid (talk) 19:24, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

• it should be mentioned that a major problem with these lists is the use of press releases or unreliable sources like Aero route to justify inclusion. Large chunks of data sourced only to primary sources are not appropriate to WP. Masem (t) 22:06, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  The irony is, the last RfC on this topic came to the conclusion that routes should only be included when sourced by reliable, secondary and independent sources - that’s what’s listed in the WikiProject style guide at WP:AIRPORT-CONTENT… but this consensus seems to be ignored frequently. The only people I’ve seen enforce it are @VenFlyer98 and @The Banner Danners430 _{tweaks made} 22:11, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  • Incorrect, due to your editing I have left the field of airports. The Banner talk 23:01, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  I feel like in places where the lists are long and deemed impossible to maintain using reliable secondary sources they should be able to be removed, and this is coming from someone who voted for 2. JustARandomSquid (talk) 22:18, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  @JustARandomSquid, do you really mean "secondary"? Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent. A secondary source provides analysis, and that analysis can be done by non-independent parties (e.g., a business case from the airport for expanding the airport or requesting a government subsidy). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  Good call. I suppose I did mean independent in this particular case. To be fair, I feel like there's a lot of confusion on primary/secondary and the independence of sources in general, but yeah, my apologies for propagating it. JustARandomSquid (talk) 22:46, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  Totally agree with you about the terminology being confusing. So I'd guess then that you'd prefer a couple of local newspaper articles, rather than, e.g., the airport's own website. For US airports, these seems to be generally available. I assume the same is true for Canada and Europe. Outside that area, I've less experience, but it seems like something that should be available at least most of the time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  An entire article sourced to a single primary source isn't great, but single sections sourced to a variety of primary and secondary sources (or independent and non-independent sources since people don't know the difference) are perfectly fine. This is not controversial or objectionable information, and primary sources are not going to be unreliable or misleading for such simple facts. — Reywas92^Talk 15:11, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  For some of the larger lists that are out there, the bulk of the sourcing is primary, and that makes those lists a IINFO problem, it's comparable to Trivia and why we ask for summarizing to independent third party sources to avoid indiscriminate inclusion Masem (t) 05:23, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Exactly. I lean towards option 3, but only for the very largest of tables, specifically those where the majority can't easily be sourced to reliable third-party sources. JustARandomSquid (talk) 08:09, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  @JustARandomSquid, why not just say that such lists must be sourced to independent, secondary RS in general, regardless of list size? JoelleJay (talk) 17:09, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Maybe because WP:IINFO doesn't mention secondary sources? @Masem, IINFO wants Wikipedia:Independent sources, not secondary ones.

  I wonder, if we went to the work of going through one of the larger lists, how many of those we'd be able to cite to, say, a newspaper article. I just added several independent sources to the table in Heathrow Airport. I looked up two airlines in Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library and found multiple independent reliable sources without any trouble. I'm not finding any evidence that these can't be easily sourced to reliable, third-party sources – if a WP:VOLUNTEER puts in the time and effort.

  Aficionados may wish to particularly seek out the "Key Routes" feature (the headline is usually "A selection of 50 new routes starting in [Month Year]") in Air Transport World, if the desire is specifically to document when an airline begins providing service to a new airport (might be handy, e.g., for documenting the start date of a historical route). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  In the case of air route lines, the bulk of the sources are primary (related to the airline itself) or non-reliable like Aeroroutes. A primary source that lacks independence is not good to use, so that basically means we are looking towards how secondary or tertiary independent sources discuss air routes from an airport.

  I would also be extremely wary of using air travel trade magazines unless we know the airlines or airports do not pay at all to have their content featured in there. That gets to the NCORP problem in regards to sourcing only via WP:SIRS (not notability). I'm absolutely certain that if we allowed any and all trade magazines to be used many more of these routes could be sourced, but how much of that was paid publicity by the airline? Masem (t) 20:32, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Once again, Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent. When you write things like the sources are primary (related to the airline itself), you are wrong. Sources "related to the airline itself" are non-independent. Non-independent sources can be primary or secondary (or even tertiary).

  A primary source that lacks independence is not good to use, but a primary source that has independence is probably fine. If you're still struggling with this, look at the table in Wikipedia:Party and person#Combinatorics. You're talking about first-party primary sources ("Scientist publishes an original report about their experiments") and saying that the problems with first-party primary sources are proof that we can't use third-party primary sources – a category that includes quite a lot of what you'll find in any ordinary daily newspaper.

  Just like newspapers run the gamut from newspapers of record to grocery store tabloids, trade rags run the gamut from excellent sources to barely disguised advertisements. Editors should use reliable sources, including trade magazines that are reliable sources. In the case of the one I recommended here, the magazine is cited in scholarly sources and books. I think that's a solid indication that this particular trade magazine is a reliable source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  When you're talking about the bulk of the sources, are you talking about what sources could be cited (similar to WP:NEXIST), or are you talking only about the ones that have already been cited? Do you think we should make a content decision based on whether the current citation is bad, or based on what better sources say?

  For example, the first row in Heathrow Airport#Airlines and destinations previously had only a citation to a random website. I added citations to two notable magazines. Was that row unencyclopedic content originally, and the addition of better citations magically changed the nature of the content from unencyclopedic to encyclopedic? Or was it actually encyclopedic content all along, and we just needed someone to spend 10 minutes finding and typing out the citations? Or is it still unencyclopedic content, and all of this about poor sources is just a red herring? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Because a small list with just a few destinations sourced to primary sources is a relatively small part of the article, that isn't likely to change very often, and thus doesn't cause a large amount of information in an article to be not sourced to independent secondary sources. JustARandomSquid (talk) 20:49, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• Am I the only one who doesn't like the focus on tables? I personally don't care how the information is presented, I care that it's readable, I care that it's sourced, and I care that the information has enough secondary sourcing to pass the 10 year test. (To put this against the example I used in the last RFC - decades after the fact, I care that Ted Stevens International Airport connected America, Europe, and Asia. I care that Iliamna Airport had flights connecting it to Anchorage, and I will care when those flights are no longer offered. I won't care that you can fly from Ted Stevens to Los Angeles on one of several flights - and other editors don't care either, given that this information is removed from the article as soon as the flight is discontinued.) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 22:15, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

  I think the focus on the tables is both helpful and a bit silly. Firstly, the focus is on "gigantic tables", but most airports are on the smaller side (left-tailed distribution). Secondly, if you actually look at one of these smaller tables, does it really matter whether there's a small table or whether there are two sentences containing the same facts and the same (newspaper article) sources? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

• How do secondary (and yes, I do actually mean secondary) sources actually cover airline routes? From a quick search, my impression is that it is more often done by airline instead of by airport. Do these lists actually meet NLIST and/or have any selection criteria besides "all of them we can find"? Alpha3031 (t • c) 00:47, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  NLIST is the guideline for whether a list warrants a stand-alone page, not whether or not a list can be included on an article, see WP:NNC. A list could not "meet NLIST" and still be permissible for inclusion within an article, which is what option 1 permits. Katzrockso (talk) 00:59, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  I am aware there are other criteria for determining the appropriateness of embedded lists. I don't think I've said otherwise but I will take that under advisement. I still believe reference to sources is helpful. Alpha3031 (t • c) 08:46, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  It's unclear what relevance NLIST (a part of the notability guideline) has to content with an article, given that WP:NNC specifically forecloses such a connection. "[R]eference to sources" may be helpful, but that has nothing to do with NLIST. That is what I was commenting on. Katzrockso (talk) 09:16, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I strongly disagree that NNC forecloses a connection between sources used for notability and article content. They (the sources that are in-depth and seccondary) are often, for example, the best sources for determining due weight. Alpha3031 (t • c) 18:00, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  I completely agree that attributes of sources determine due weight, I completely disagree with connecting notability with WP:DUEness, which just leads to conceptual muddling. Katzrockso (talk) 00:11, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

  It's variable - for some airports, you can find coverage of routes (at least broadly) & their impact in academic sources. As to whether that's enough for NLIST - I'm a bit conservative when it comes to spinouts and like WP:NOPAGE arguments, but I'm willing to bet that a collection of destinations (historic or otherwise) of at least a few significant airports could meet that threshold. I don't think most airports do- but most airports I'm familiar with don't have enough regularly scheduled flights that including the one or two that are would inherently be a WEIGHT or DUE issue. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 01:26, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Arbitrary break (Airports discussion)

• I know this isn't within the scope of the RfC, but I saw this in the collapsed box and wanted to make a comment. - any individual routes that are specifically listed in a summary, should be sourced with reliable secondary sources, sufficient to satisfy WP:NOTABILITY. I am not sure if I am reading this correctly, but I believe this seems to say that the summary in prose would require the content to "satisfy notability"? If so, that is a misunderstanding as notability does not apply to content within articles. Katzrockso (talk) 00:56, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• Just adding in my thoughts here. If anyone has seen me around editing, you'd know that more than 90% of my edits or so are airport lists. I'm kind of for any of the options in this RfC, the main issue with the lists is really the sourcing. With the recommendation that sources use independent, secondary sources, it can be hard to find sources for certain routes. This results in a lot of edits being reverted or unsourced. If we allow sources directly from the airline about a route (whether that's their schedule website or a news release from the airline), that would solve a lot of the sourcing issues, and I do think it meets WP:RSPRIMARY enough. If a secondary source is available, great, we can replace the primary one with it. If not though, using them to show that an airline is flying from A to B or launching a new route on a certain day isn't original research as long as the source outright states the route/date. This could significantly cut down on the amount of unsourced routes and reverts that happen. As someone who edits a lot of these lists the main issues I have with them is the sourcing and having to constantly monitor since content is added/removed all the time from them (specifically for bigger airports). Just my 2 cents. (VenFlyer98 (talk) 03:00, 8 December 2025 (UTC))

  I believe the plan is to have a separate RFC asking about sourcing (e.g., does a sentence in Durango–La Plata County Airport saying that United Airlines flies from Durango–La Plata County Airport to Denver need a secondary/analytical source? an independent source? a newspaper article? a source that uses a list format? a source that names all the flights? a source that could single-handedly justify a Wikipedia:Separate, stand-alone article called United Airlines flights between Durango–La Plata County Airport and Denver International Airport? something else?).

  I think that examples help, so hopefully that RFC can be drafted after this one is done and dusted, with real examples of summaries/lists/tables. It will be easier for editors to look at "United Airlines flies from Durango–La Plata County Airport to Denver^{[newspaper article]}" or "* United Airlines – Denver International Airport^{[flight tracker]}" and say whether it's okay or not, than to ask abstractly whether sources should provide "SIGCOV IRS" or "ordinary rules apply" or other general categories. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:25, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  The previous discussion that was closed as to required secondary sources was an utter mess, with many people not understanding what "secondary" means and a closure that was not in the scope of the question. I agree that artificially constraining the sources that can be used, unlike nearly any other content in the project, for very straightforward, uncontroversial, unbiased facts is completely unnecessary. — Reywas92^Talk 15:15, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  User:Reywas92 thank you and User:VenFlyer98, there does seem to be a confusion with 'independent' or 'second-party' because route info might come from the airline, airport, newspaper, some government flight plan records or something else but just a route from a to b is not 'secondary' in nature that WP:PSTS says A secondary source provides thought and reflection based on primary sources. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 21:23, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  The thing is, we're just trying to present facts, in the same way a sports team would present an up to date list of players. We don't need detailed analysis of why an airline started a specific route, we just need the fact to be correct and verifiable! SportingFlyer T·C 23:13, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  WP:PSTS actually says A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. (emphasis in original). This is exactly what these routes are: straightforward, descriptive statements of fact. Thryduulf (talk) 23:54, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

• @Reywas92: The idea of having the two sections is so that discussions are kept to this discussion section, and the above Survey section is for editors to place their votes and explain why. Can we please keep the discussions to this section? Danners430 _{tweaks made} 14:58, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• WP:NOTGUIDE does not apply -- it says an article on Paris should mention landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but not the telephone numbers or street addresses of the "best" restaurants, nor the current price of a café au lait on the Champs-Élysées., and destinations as notable points - whether shown as a list or map -- are a common and necessary part of meaningful content on topics. That someone uses it during travel does not make it a Travel guide, because it does not provide recommendations at the location and is not providing the table as a list of things to do which is what a travel guide is. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 20:23, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• WP:OR and WP:SYNTH do not apply. A collection of routes without any remarks does not do what WP:OR says original research means material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists. Nor does it do what WP:SYNTH says Do not combine material from multiple sources to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 20:44, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

  OR absolutely applies. Per policy: Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. If secondary, independent sources are not discussing these wide swaths of content, the content is also not BALASP. JoelleJay (talk) 17:15, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Except nobody is basing entire articles on primary sources, and the instruction to "be cautious" regarding large passages on primary sources is very far from a prohibition. With only a small number of exceptions, destination lists are not a large part of most articles. Also if multiple, very large RFCs about inclusion is not "being cautious" then I don't know what is. So, no, OR and SYNTH are not relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 17:23, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Even if we stipulated, for the sake of argument, that "be cautious" meant the same thing as "is absolutely forbidden", the entire table at Durango–La Plata County Airport#Airlines and destinations, including the column headings, contains a total of 21 words. Nobody is likely to mistake 21 words for being a "large passage".

  I think it's confusing to have this rule ("Do not base an entire article...") in the "Original research" article. Relying too heavily on primary sources doesn't mean that you're making stuff up that can't be found in any source, particularly when you are repeating only very simple facts. I think that WP:PSTS needs to become its own, separate {{policy}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  If the only coverage a (sub)topic receives is what non-independent and/or primary sources say about it, it is unlikely to be worthy of inclusion (especially beyond a couple sentences) in the first place. JoelleJay (talk) 18:12, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  If that were actually true, we wouldn't have birth dates in a majority of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (and I'd be happy about that, but possibly nobody else). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:29, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I said it's unlikely, which I believe is in line with the cautions already present in PSTS. Birthdates also aren't going to take up more than a couple sentences. JoelleJay (talk) 17:46, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  Yes they are? Plenty of these lists are standalone articles sourced entirely to primary and non-independent sources. And RfCs on whether a given list fails NOT does not mean there is consensus that its content is inherently encyclopedic or that it is exempt from our notability and OR requirements. Indeed, we had a "very large RfC" that explicitly determined that these lists DO need secondary sourcing. JoelleJay (talk) 18:09, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  @JoelleJay, can you provide some links? NB that this RFC is about airports, not airlines, so List of British Airways destinations is off topic. A relevant example would be something like a List of Heathrow airport connections. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Ah my bad. JoelleJay (talk) 17:46, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

• Is there any difference between these lists and a list of products sold in a shop? The list of products is easily verifiable on the shop's website, it's helpful to people coming to Wikipedia to look for that information and selling products is the shop's raison d'etre. ~2025-39432-75 (talk) 12:41, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Note the above comment is from a user account that’s only been used for this one comment. — Charles Stewart (talk) 14:07, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  And I've kept the TA active because the question is genuine and not rhetorical. Do people say "I'm going to this restaurant later, so I'll look up what meals they offer in an encyclopaedia" like they do with airports? If not, how do airports differ from shops or restaurants? Sorry if this has been answered before; I've read through this discussion and some related ones in the past, but not everything on the topic. ~2025-39432-75 (talk) 14:27, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I'm not sure that's the best way to understand this information. First, yes, a restaurant article should name anything that the restaurant is known/used for, which would include a famous dish. You could legitimately look up a notable, not-so-famous restaurant with an ambiguous name (e.g., Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant or Florence's Restaurant) and expect to find information about the kind of food they serve.

  But airport connections matter because they have economic effects on the surrounding community. A restaurant can sell hamburgers or burritos or stir-fry, and their choice largely affects the restaurant's own success. A regional airport that connects to several major hubs instead of to just one airport, or that has connections going in every direction instead of just in one direction, is more effective at bringing in business.

  For example, we've used Kearney Regional Airport as an example in these discussions (because it appears to be the airport closest to the geographic center of the US). Right now, if you're at Kearney, you have one possible flight destination, which is Denver. Next year, they'll add service to Chicago. Who is pushing for this? The City of Kearney (i.e., not the airline). Why has the city been pushing for it? The city "hopes the renewed service will boost the Kearney Regional Airport and the surrounding area...put us on the map as a place that people can live, work, play right here in central Nebraska". In other words, this is about direct and indirect economic benefits for the whole region.

  Where you can fly to from a regional airport is in no way comparable to what kind of food a restaurant sells. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:56, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  This example is true for many smaller airports in other countries as well. Routes for small airports on island nations such as Miangas Airport or Ramata Airport is very notable to the airport itself. Those routes are literally the lifeline of the airport itself and the surrounding areas. Those routes are likely be pushed by their respective governments, not just made because they are profitable. The completeness of the route may be less important on big airports but it is absolutely critical for smaller airports. ✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 23:30, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  But if these routes truly are important to those airports, that would be reflected in SIRS (otherwise the claim would be unverifiable for BALASP purposes). JoelleJay (talk) 17:49, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Chalst As the commenter is using a temporary account, all that shows is that this is the first edit they've made to Wikipedia (without logging in) using that browser, on that computer, since cookies were last deleted (and it's not uncommon for this to happen automatically when someone logs off a shared computer) or 30 days ago (whichever is the most recent). Thryduulf (talk) 15:00, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Wikipedia does describe the menus Tim Hortons for example. But they don’t provide prices or recommendations. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 06:41, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

  It describes them. It doesn't provide an exhaustive list. JoelleJay (talk) 17:39, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

  In a parallel dimension somewhere someone is defending their listing of all the different varieties of TimBits on WP because "it doesn't include the pricing information", as if that makes anything any better. FOARP (talk) 14:01, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

• @Rosbif73: (replying to your reply to Thryduulf in the Survey section) The sourcing of these tables is very variable. There are absolutely exceedingly well sourced articles, especially many US airports. However, there are even "Western" airports where sourcing leaves a lot to be desired... the perfect example is Gatwick Airport - it took a draconian (as some editors put it) stripping of all unsourced content to prompt editors to start adding reliable sources, with the end result that the table, while still (I believe) incomplete, is now fully sourced. Even now however there are a large number of Better Source Needed tags. The worst articles I've seen are those in non-English speaking countries (which is understandable given this is the English Wikipedia) - again, there are many very well sourced tables, but there are also some which are very poor. I think this really is the crux of the issue - none of this would ever have reared its head if all the tables were well sourced and maintained... but there are many which simply aren't. Many articles, I appear to be the only editor regularly reverting unsourced additions. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 13:27, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Agree entirely: while there are indeed some airports with destination lists that are complete, up to date and properly sourced, there are a fair number more that are up to date but poorly sourced, a few that used to be well sourced but are now out of date, and a host of others that are neither up to date nor properly sourced.

  But even if the vast majority were complete, up to date and properly sourced, I still have my doubts that they would be truly encyclopedic. The tables purport to be a snapshot of destinations served at a given date (generally recent but unspecified), yet the actual destinations vary over time. How can that snapshot pass the WP:10YEARTEST? Rosbif73 (talk) 14:34, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, I wholeheartedly agree - this is why I voted for 3 or 4 (or potentially Blueboar's alternative solution) - I personally disagree with the use of these lists, Gatwick Airport is to me a prime example of why. I know a lot of folks disagree, hence the attempt to keep the RfC neutral though! Danners430 _{tweaks made} 14:39, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Recentism is a red herring though, because there are other areas of the website which we update to be current, especially lists of players on sports teams. Someone reading this article in 10 years will absolutely not be confused - heck there are soccer teams with squads which haven't been updated in awhile but they have a date of the last update, which at least lets the reader know the information is correct, but stagnant. SportingFlyer T·C 17:25, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  The question is not whether all these tables are properly sourced - if that were the case then we'd need to delete literally thousands (at minimum) of lists, almost all of which exist uncontroversially and many with explicit consensus. Nor is the question whether these lists are maintained (which the majority of them are). The question is whether these are encyclopaedic, sourceable and maintainable, and per the evidence and opinions I and others have presented elsewhere in this discussion the answer to all three is "yes". Thryduulf (talk) 14:56, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, you have been around long enough to know that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a good argument. And there is obviously a lot of disagreement as to whether these are encyclopedic. Blueboar (talk) 15:06, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  It is not a WP:OTHERSTUFF argument to point out that an argument for or against something directly contradicts overlapping consensuses. Specifically in this case, if the argument for deleting these lists is that some of them are unsourced, it is incumbent upon the person making that argument to explain why that doesn't apply elsewhere in the encyclopaedia - if you argue that X and Y are different you need to explain what makes them different. Thryduulf (talk) 16:35, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  If OTHERSTUFF is unsourced, that simply means that we either have to find acceptable sources for that other stuff or remove it. Same applies here.

  But that still leaves the disagreement over whether THIS specific “stuff” is encyclopedic. I know you (and others) believe it is, and you know that I (and others) believe it is not. Remember that Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion. Even if these lists can be sourced, that does not mean we must include them. Blueboar (talk) 16:56, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion, but being presently unsourced does not require exclusion nor is it a valid justification for exclusion. I know that you believe the lists are unencyclopaedic, but I've yet to see any reason supporting that viewpoint that hasn't been fully refuted and/or shown to be irrelevant to the question. In contrast viewpoints that regard these as encyclopaedic are fully supported by what policies and guidelines actually say (rather than what some people would like them to say). Thryduulf (talk) 17:09, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Blueboar, the options aren't just:

  • find acceptable sources right now, or
  • remove it right now.

  There are also the valid options of:

  • tag it in the hope of attracting assistance, and
  • leave it for someone to fix another time.

  As you and I have agreed many times over the years, material is verifiable if someone can find a reliable source for it, not solely when an editor has already typed a citation into the article.

  One of the problems we've been having in the last two or three years is the RFC in which "I" declare that somebody else should provide sources that meet my standards, but which I'm not willing to lift a finger to find or add myself. This is incompatible with our WP:VOLUNTEER structure. An RFC cannot assign tasks to people who think their time is better spent elsewhere, so a result of "Somebody else should do this work" isn't a practical or functional outcome. But an RFC makes a visible platform for people to affirm their allegiance to high-quality sources, so we get a lot of editors saying that this is the best way to cite this material, even though basically none of them intend to do any of the work. This leads to us having too many people issuing orders and not enough people doing the useful work. We may have a cultural problem here ("Who has to do the boring, tedious work of finding good sources? Policy says not me! Policy says I get to blank everything if somebody else doesn't do what I tell them to do before my WP:DEADLINE. I'm WP:NOTHERE to collaborate with people who want accurate information in articles when I think they've cited weak sources"), rather than a rules-based problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:27, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Nitpicking and wikilawyering. To be blunt, I don’t care whether these routes are verifiable or not. I don’t think they are encyclopedic. Per VNOT I would omit them.

  Hence my !vote suggestion to split the info - listing airlines in the airport articles, and airports in the airline articles. Blueboar (talk) 20:52, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I prefer to think of it as "clarifying", though some of it does involve quite small and potentially unimportant details.

  It sounds like the bottom line for you is that even if an editor decides to find acceptable sources for that other stuff, you would prefer to remove it anyway.

  Personally, in terms of an instinctual feeling about what's encyclopedic and what's not, I'd go the other direction: The airline is unimportant to an airport, and the destination is the key thing. I think this partly because of how the US market works (airlines are mostly interchangeable from the average passenger's POV; especially for Essential Air Service (10% of US airports with scheduled passenger service?), if Alice Air stops flying from A to B, then Bob's Airline will soon start flying from A to B). It's possible that people in other parts of the world would have a different choice, but if I had to pick either airline or destination for an airport article, I'd pick the destination.

  The reliable sources tend to provide both, so I'm not sure that we should be choosing between the two, but it's interesting that we pick the opposite items. Are you thinking more about the global businesses? I'm thinking more about the travelers in the airport's region. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  As someone who has been very actively trying to clean up these lists...

  1. The dream - I try, but as I'm not an avgeek I often don't know where to look.
  2. My current go-to - but brings with it serious backlash
  3. Has achieved nothing in my experience, aside from attracting the ire of editors that believe (understandably) that a mass of tags as ugly... and in my experience, I've only ever seen a single user react to them - and they are now blocked (Wibwob28).
  4. In my humble opinion, not an option - if I see an issue, then I should be attempting to fix it instead of leaving it for someone else. If we all did this, then nothing would ever get improved or fixed.

  So what does that leave us? If I can't find a source for a route (which is most of the time, darn the fact I'm a train nerd instead of an aviation nerd), the other three options wind up with an angry mob on the talk pages...

  My opinion on the matter is simple - we've proven over the last multiple months just how much trouble it is to try and maintain basic standards in these tables, resulting in multiple ANIs and certain editors calling for me to be topic banned. Given that all I'm doing is trying to improve the encyclopaedia, that only leaves one other common denominator... the existence of these tables. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 21:10, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Have you tried searching Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library? That's what I did today for Heathrow, and it didn't take long to find three sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I have not - primarily because of the below... what time I have on Wikipedia is almost entirely taken up on recent changes patrolling, which is what I primarily choose to do. What it does highlight is it appears that I, along with only a small number of others, actively recent change patrol these pages - and because of the amount of churn, we don't have the time or energy much of the time to actually work to improve the articles. If our time wasn't taken up dealing with the unsourced nonsense that gets added, perhaps we'd be more willing and able to actually add content... Danners430 _{tweaks made} 21:31, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Maybe take a breather from this — you’re giving yourself (and everyone else!) a migraine for no reason. Stick to being a train nerd and let the AV geeks wrangle over the airport pages. Imagine them barging into the train articles and tearing up the stuff you spent hours perfecting… you’d be fuming! You'd combust like an over heated steam engine!! Dootfish (talk) 22:23, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I wasn’t aware random users could tell another user which areas of the encyclopaedia they should and shouldn’t be editing… how about no. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 22:33, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  While this comment is generally not very polite or nuanced, there is a small amount of truth. @Danners430, don't take this personally, but if this RfC doesn't close how you want it to, or nothing substantially changes (like after the last one), just... give up. The destinations are, whether encyclopaedic or not, whether well sourced or not, generally accurate, and there's no actual harm in leaving them like that. Stop taking the inadequate sourcing of airport tables as a personal affront (however much you believe in using Reliable Sources, to quote your userpage), and find somewhere else to contribute where you'll have less abuse hurled at you by over-enthusiastic inexperienced avgeeks. Just a suggestion. JustARandomSquid (talk) 22:36, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Now someone’s actually being polite about it… :D Don’t worry, I’m not precious about discussion outcomes. As I said in a completely unrelated discussion the other day, to me disagreements and consensus-building are just part of building Wikipedia. To me, what I really want from this RfC is to put the matter of these tables to bed once and for all, as there have been arguments flying about everywhere. So even if it doesn’t go “my way”, I’m still happy because a consensus will have been reached (or not) - we can say “at least we tried!” If we do decide to retain the lists, then nothing really changes for me - I stay recent changes patrolling, and gradually clean up the tables in terms of sourcing. Eventually, they will all be fully sourced - even if they don’t get removed.

  As for the abuse being hurled - trust me, I have a thick skin… and if it ever gets bad enough that it becomes personal attacks, I just take a step back and let ANI deal with it :) Danners430 _{tweaks made} 22:41, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Also a reminder to myself… sometimes the “abuse” is justified - I do make mistakes! Danners430 _{tweaks made} 22:43, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  I didn’t mean to offend you — it’s nothing personal. But from the outside, it does seem like you’re becoming a bit too overly focused on this, almost to an unhealthy degree. Half of Wikipedia is out of date, so it may be more worthwhile to spend your time improving the train pages, since that’s where your real interest lies. There’s no need to bring so much negativity on yourself, especially when you’re not responsible for policing the airport pages and you’re not working for Wikipedia. Dootfish (talk) 23:11, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  Even if the airport tables were removed, options 2 to 5 would still lead to new issues. It would just become a cycle of fixing one problem only for another to appear. Dootfish (talk) 23:13, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

  UK rail pages are actually in very good shape and have generally low levels of churn. I chose to start working in this area specifically because I saw how bad the sourcing was in areas, and how much unsourced content was being added. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 23:14, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• Purely in the interest if illustrating the level of churn in these articles, these are all the warnings I've left on user talk pages just today regarding unsourced content on airport destination lists. TO emphasise - this is only the unsourced content...
  • Alicante–Elche Miguel Hernández Airport
  • Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport
  • Gelephu Airport
  • Hamad International Airport
  • Salt Lake City International Airport
  • Tunku Airport
  • Austin-Bergstrom International Airport
  • Yangon International Airport
  • Zvartnots International Airport
  • Glasgow Airport

Again - that's only in the last 21 hours, and only the unsourced additions that I reverted. Sorry, but these lists are simply a timesink in terms of maintenance. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 21:27, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

• The addition of YYZ to SLC you reverted was accurate. The addition of passenger statistics to Tunku you reverted was already in fact sourced by the existing general reference, the IP merely didn't update the access date. The addition of West Air to Yangon you reverted was accurate. The addition of Alicante to Zvartnots you reverted was accurate. The addition of Glasgow to Alicante you reverted was accurate. Again, new or unregistered users adding information without sources is a routine editing issue we encounter across the project, not a reason to delete entire sections across thousands of articles. Just because you choose to sink your time into overzealously reverting actual improvements by helpful, good faith editors doesn't mean we should make these articles less informative. Reywas92^Talk 04:52, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  Perhaps the concern by @Danners430 is about using the usage of the secondary sourcing. The Alicante to Zvartnots are factually correct, there is nothing in secondary sources but the website of the airline clearly confirm that the route is accurate. I do think that airline schedules posted by the airlines themselves should be able to be used in sourcing, as it is just "facts" and there is no synthesis involved at all. If Delta posted the news on their website to fly from Charlotte to Copenhagen than it is true, there is no synthesis or further analysis needed. ✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 10:11, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  No, my concern was that it was unsourced. As Reywas92 themselves showed when they posted the diff, the IP editor simply added the route without any source, which was why it was reverted. This happens on a regular basis on these lists - there are plenty of constructive contributions too by many editors, but there are an equal number of these unsourced additions. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 10:15, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  Anyway, this isn’t exactly the venue to be discussing why I took the actions I did - I removed unsourced content which is permitted under WP:V. I posted the above simply to illustrate the amount of unsourced churn there is in these lists. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 10:16, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

• @Levivich: I would be all in favour of retaining the previous consensus - however, if you look at the state of the articles, it would appear basically nobody ever took heed of that consensus. The lists remain a comprehensive list of routes, and many even use the airline’s own timetable as the overarching source. If everyone ignored that decision last time, why would they listen this time? Danners430 _{tweaks made} 21:45, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
  • Because everyone knows that airline timetables can accurately verify the content without bias, and imposing additional requirements on these straightforward, uncontroversial facts is absurd and would result in incomplete lists. Since then we have in fact retained route-specific news sources rather than removing them on route start like before, but it will take time to add those everywhere, and most users are unaware of that discussion since it's inconsistent with sourcing requirements elsewhere. Overarching sources are fine for this sort of basic material. Reywas92^Talk 05:02, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

    • I can't follow your reasoning. This is an encylopedia. We don't need "complete lists". We're writing a book report level summary of what other people write about topics. If Airline Timetables exist, we should NOT be copying them and just reposting them on Wikipedia. Just add a link to the timetables on the airline articles - poof! Done! Accurate, up to date information at your fingertips. Denaar (talk) 14:39, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

      Except we aren't just copying airline timetables, as we have no information about frequency, schedules, durations, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 15:34, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

      But readers aren't looking for individual airlines' timetables, they're looking for the compiled information of what parts of those timetables relate to specific airports, and the compilation as a whole conveys information about operations at the airport generally. What in world does "We don't need 'complete lists'" mean? I'm at regular at WP:FLC and we certainly expect lists to be complete. There might be a book report summary in the lead, but that's no excuse not to bother to show the full picture. — Reywas92^Talk 15:36, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

      If complete lists don't exist anywhere else and can't be sourced appropriately (by secondary, independent sources demonstrating how such lists/info actually are important to understanding the airport), then they should be hosted on a different wiki. JoelleJay (talk) 18:01, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm seriously leaning toward option 5 but feel it's perhaps a bit of an over reaction. I can't help but think is there a way to write the table to suggest "here are some examples" instead of suggestion completeness, because human nature is to want things complete. Then it looks like, from some examples I followed, we've got the same info on the airline articles too, so it's in two places? It makes more sense to me to have it on the airline (this is where they go) then on the airport, the airport isn't connecting to other places, its the airline routes that are. Denaar (talk) 04:51, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

Additional pings for participants of Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 60#RfC on WP:NOT and British Airways destinations who may not be aware of this: Sunnya343 Cal1407 Drcarrot.phd Jkudlick OhanaUnited SounderBruce Siroxo spintheer Aaronw1109 Llywrch Axisstroke Sjakkalle CHCBOY Stifle Steelpillow Der HON Oknazevad Alanscottwalker FlyingScotsman72 Tavix Carwil JoergenB Penguino35 Kusma Senior Captain Thrawn Nfutvol Thincat Fieari Transgenderoriole Avgeekamfot P199 Fortuna imperatrix mundi. Reywas92^Talk 17:17, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the tag! FlyingScotsman72 (talk) 00:52, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Listed for closure but then quickly reverted after seeing recent vote and pings. Sorry for any disruption. Should probably wait for the 30 days. Dw31415 (talk) 21:30, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

My first choice is option 1 as there hasn;t really been an issue with the standard for so long, but suddenly were seeing a plethora of airport pages get chopped with no attempt to source the "unsourced" flights listed. This is really aimed at one user that seems to make it their mission and it's borderline vandalism.

Second choice is option 2, especially for mega hubs like DFW, LHR, etc. Reednavy (talk) 15:19, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

I think you wanted to post in the survey, not the discussion.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 20:05, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

@Reednavy you might want to move your comment to the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Airport destination lists 2#Survey (airports) section, otherwise a closer might might your reply. Katzrockso (talk) 23:04, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Thinking over this, I’m more so leaning option 1 or 2 if some primary sources are allowed; per WP:PRIMARY, I’m not sure why we can’t use them? If we use an airline or airport article that announces or shows routes, that’s a statement of fact that anyone would be able to verify. If there’s a secondary source, great, we can use that instead but if only primary is available, I do think most meet the policy of WP:PRIMARY. If this continues to not be allowed, then option 4 or 5. I know a separate RfC is being planned specifically for the table sourcing, but it’s kind of tricky when this RfC and that one go hand in hand. (VenFlyer98 (talk) 15:39, 30 December 2025 (UTC))

@VenFlyer98, I believe this RfC is trying to answer the question of whether these lists are encyclopedic whatsoever and/or whether they should be included in the airport articles, and then after this discussion there will be a separate RfC on sourcing/how to source the articles. Katzrockso (talk) 23:03, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

@Katzrockso: Yes, which my answer is related to…I’ve been heavily involved in airport editing and closely monitor these discussions…(VenFlyer98 (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2026 (UTC))

• The destination lists are data and would be best housed at Wikidata. As they are useful to me and, going by a lot of the commenters here, others (and presumably readers) I imagine English Wikipedia would choose to transclude the data as list in airport articles (and/or a nifty route map generated from the data). Until this mythical system is in place, the lists will need to remain in articles. I can understand the unencyclopedic angle and all of the searching through policies to try and exclude this information, but currently Wikipedia is the gateway for this knowledge. If you want to restrict Wikipedia's ability to distribute knowledge, it is only fair to build a path to where it can lie and thrive in peace. --Commander Keane (talk) 06:41, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
• would it be possible to transclude the tables? that would keep it out of the history, right? That would solve the "constant changes filling up the article history" issue — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2025-42937-64 (talk) 06:03, 3 January 2026 (UTC)
• How do we define very large destination tables in Option 2 or large destination tables in Option 3? —🌊PacificDepths (talk) 05:42, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

  The airport lists are completely valid. Maybe some places are missing updates, but these take time to make.

  Many people around the world use the airport lists to plan their destinations, and see which airlines fly where.

  I personally help to ensure that the lists are valid, based on my work as an aviation analyst, and writer on an aviation industry website.

  The airport lists and the aviation project have existed for as long as I can remember, so I do not agree with "shutting down" the lists in the project at all.

  It should also be mentioned that new destinations often have sources indicated. BUT! There is a big problem in that the sources are eventually removed from the lists, and or made invalid when they have been there for a very long time. And this is a problem that can be seen with the Mexico City Airport article, where many destinations have been removed due to lack of source indication Erobran (talk) 17:49, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

• I note that RfC starter User:Danners430 is actively removing unsourced content and edit warring over it while this RfC is underway. An inappropriate interpretation of WP:BURDEN in a collaborative encyclopedia when discussion is underway. I suppose plot summaries are next. Then bots removing every sentence without a citation after it. Then the user generated maps. Example: Mexico City International Airport (and their two following reverts). Sources were found. This does relate back to my point above that while Wikipedia may want to exist as a mundane, minimalist, irrelevant prose playground, other projects may wish to work with the data currently in Wikipedia articles. Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.--Jimmy Wales (link). You don't get a medal for promoting knowledge NIMBYism, free knowledge suffers.--Commander Keane (talk) 00:55, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

  If you’d care to look at ANI and the discussion there. Removal of unsourced content is explicitly permitted, and I’m not going to stop removing content that should never have been added in the first place. Again, this isn’t the place to discuss behavioural matters - that’s what ANI is for. See you there if you wish, because I’m not discussing it here. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 09:02, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

  Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Constantly destroying of a wikiproject:. -- Beland (talk) 10:02, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

• There seems to be an only prose or only table mentality in this RfC. I opted for #1 (no change) but I welcome prose too - all of the prose examples discussed sound good to me. In sources I read, the prose is often complemented by a table with details.--Commander Keane (talk) 08:19, 17 January 2026 (UTC)
• Including my own !vote there are a couple of other Wikidata comments (I also commented above). Wikidata allows filtering out data without references, specifying the date the source was correct or end dates (no longer transient; historical information is available), it frees up Wikipedia article histories, and as it is data you can pull a simple list of airlines servicing an airport, or list a destinations, or the services offered globally by an airline. I added data to Cairns Airport (Q474632) and now there are some Wikidata explorations, including a map (my favourite) and tables by airline and destination at: User:Commander Keane/Airports wikidata.--Commander Keane (talk) 08:19, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.