Talk:British Airways/GA3

GA Reassessment

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This article has been a GA since September 2009 but there are some issues which need addressing.

There is a 'clarification needed' tag in Recent aircraft orders.

Within the Branding subsection of Marketing, there are several short paragraphs which could be brought together. The final paragraph on London 2012 needs references.

Within the Loyalty programmes subsections, there is a 'citation needed' tag in the Premier section. There should also be references for Avios.

Cloudbound (talk) 11:15, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In only 15 minutes, I've managed to sort over half the issues out. It seems a bit much nominating the entire article for reassessment when these errors could be fixed in about the same time it took to list it for reassessment to begin with. Kyteto (talk) 18:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. That's very noble of you. It isn't one of the article's I've been working on, so I thought it best to put it here for others to improve it and comment. Cloudbound (talk) 19:29, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

While this article is at GAR, I have some additional concerns, which are considerably more structural than those stated above:

My general impression of the article is that it reads as though it were written by the marketing department of BA, not by a neutral third party.
At least parts of the article reads more as an entry at WikiTravel than in an encyclopedia.
The article tends to over-focus on recent events and trivialities
Instead of writing prose, the article is filled with minor lists, breaking up the content and giving less context

These issues all concern criteria 1a, 3b, and to less degree, criteria 4. Specific issues include:

In the history section, the merger with Iberia takes up one-third of the section, and is also a top-level section (3b)
The table under "financial performance" is not encyclopedic, as it is a data dump of very detailed information. Instead, the history section should be written in such a way as to reflect the development in key figures in a holistic way. (3b) This section is also full of capitalization errors (1a).
Instead of writing a section in prose explaining the various franchise affairs of BA, the "Subsidiaries, franchisees and shareholdings" section is full of bullet lists. Particularly in this section, there are many short paragraphs, failing criteria 1a.
What on earth does the sentence "British Airways holds a United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority Type A Operating Licence, and is permitted to carry passengers, cargo, and mail on aircraft with 20 or more seats." mean? Why should an airline which operates the 747 not have permission to operate 20+ seat aircraft? (3b)
Most of the operations information is actually history.
Then there is the odd sentence "British Airways owns a 13.5% stake in Spanish airline Iberia." (4)
The destinations section does not summarize the airline's route network. For instance, it does not mention its hubs, the distribution of short-haul/long-haul services, but instead is a list of other airlines without direct connection with BA (3b)
Similarly, a more appropriate way to summarize the partnership section would be in prose, explaining the context and extent (3b/1a).
A two-sentence section, "technology", which is placed under "partnership"? (1a)
Again, the engine choice section should be written in prose instead of lists. (1a)
The section on marketing is comparable in length to the history section, and goes into vast detail about rather marginal issues, and again presents a deep recent bias. In particular the section on the mile calculator is not the type of information which is considered encyclopedic. Also the arms section should, if included, be changed to prose presentation. (3b)
The cabin section is by far the most extreme violation of 3b; a section the same length as for instance the history section, it goes into sufficient detail to identify the specific meal on any given flight. The information can best be described as cruft, and can in no way be described as encyclopedic.
The section on "Flight Information and Control of Operations" goes far into detail on a marginal issue, even mentioning the number of segments in a particular software. (3b)
Despite the amount of detail in some areas, the article completely fails to address more technical concerns, for instance, does BA maintain its own aircraft, does it operate its own ground handing at its hubs, to what degree does it own or lease aircraft? This sort of information I would expect to see in the operations section. (3b)

While perhaps none of the issues in isolation grave, in sum the article falls short of the criteria. Arsenikk ^(talk) 20:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this assessment, espeically that some ridiculous amounts of inane and pointless information has been packed into some parts of the article, with far too much focus on the recent 'now' perspective. I shall work on this over the coming week. Kyteto (talk) 23:46, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(4) The statement refers to what the airline is actually licensed for - you dont get a ticket for flying 747s just anything over 20 seats. It can be changed it is really just saying that the airline is actually licensed and provides a link to the licence details. MilborneOne (talk) 19:57, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(6) I removed this from shareholding - although referenced it is likely that the shareholding has been passed to the IAG, please revert if you think I am wrong. MilborneOne (talk) 20:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(10) Cut back the engine choice section to one para but I am not sure it really tells us anything other than they use engines from all the big manufacturers. Perhaps consider removing it, thoughts? MilborneOne (talk) 20:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(11) Just a comment on the "Arms" section and agree with the comments but I also think it has undue weight as a large banner in the article, I also think that the image is only a small part of the coat of arms! (the bit with the moto is missing). MilborneOne (talk) 20:17, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed we already have an image further up the article of the "proper" coat of arms so I have removed the large and clearly wrong infobox. MilborneOne (talk) 20:19, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(13) I removed the FICO bit it doesnt appear to be particularly notable or relevant or unique. MilborneOne (talk) 19:54, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have worked hard to address, and hopefully resolve: (1), (3), (4), (11), (12). Many of your major points have been addressed, with the combined efforts of editors over 12% of the article has been cut away in the process of slimming it down. My efforts wll continue, but an update on your continued priorities for this work in light o the heavy changes would be desirable, it would be a shame for this article to fail if only through a communication gap. Kyteto (talk) 03:52, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article is looking much better. The financial performance could be replaced with a graph showing pax, revenue and income from 1975 through 2010. If I can find data for all those years, I can attempt to make such a graph, although the current link is dead. If anyone comes across any such data, please post the link here. I'll have a look at the article in more detail when I have slightly more time. Arsenikk ^(talk) 13:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that I have recently attempted to contruct a graph in a test environment, but it is simply beyond me. I cannot perform the task well enough, there are just too much data types for me to get my head around and properly outline, I've got no experience in working with this aspect of Wiki code. Kyteto (talk) 14:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hows the reassessment going? AIRcorn (talk) 06:01, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My sincere apologies for keeping this at GAR for this length of time. All my issues have been resolved, so I'm going to archive this GAR as a keep. Arsenikk ^(talk) 10:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]