Talk:Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 402

Units

@RandomCanadian: Regarding Units, people who read Wikipedia are not necessarily pilots, in fact most are not and many English speakers live in parts of the world where non metric units are not understood, despite colonialism, hence the requirement to have SI primary as per MOS:UNIT. This also applies to consistency. Avi8tor (talk) 16:32, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

@Avi8tor: Most people who read Wikipedia articles are not experts in the topic that is being presented. That has nothing to do with how we should present the information to the readers. Most fields have a particular convention as to which units are usually used. British railways use miles and chains. Ships use nautical miles and knots. Airplanes use feet, knots and nautical miles (even, yes, in places where metric is otherwise used for daily life). This is what MOS:UNITS says when it refers to "or such other units as are conventional in reliable-source discussions of the article topic". This is borne out by the accident report ([1]). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:35, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian: People who read Wikipedia live all over the planet, this article had SI as the primary unit when I updated it with information from the actual accident report, I just kept it the same. Consistency is also important so that the same unit is always first, also stated in the manual of style. Some trains in the UK use mph, others use km/h so it's a mess and not a good example https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41634&start=20. They might use miles on speedometers in the UK but the roadwork is done in metres, hence lane width 6 ft 6 in or 9 ft 9 in on the sign is actually 2 and 3 m. I've flown around the planet a few times and except for the US and Canada, the rest of the world uses metres for visibility and distance on the ground in Aviation. Many ships use km/h now that you don't need a sextant to navigate. The choice of primary units depends on the circumstances, and should respect the principle of "strong national ties", where applicable. This report was probably made in Japan with the help of the Civil Aviation authorities in Canada and the manufacturer. I think this comes down to your preference here with not agreeing with what came before, perhaps because of where you live? What unit is listed in the source is irrelevant. Avi8tor (talk) 17:37, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

How silly an insinuation. I live in Canada and use metric pretty consistently. There is however simply no denying that aircraft primarily use imperial units, even nowadays. Ever looked at aviation charts or listened to ATC? Even in the middle of Europe, it is in feet and nautical miles/knots... Ever looked at the cockpit of an airliner (or any aircraft, for that matter?)? They're all usually set to feet for the altimeter, and speed is in knots... This is simply a very obvious example of the very kind of place where it makes sense to favour something other than metric, a common-sense exception which is even described in the guideline as such (and please don't repeat the same spurious arguments about UK railways, these are entirely irrelevant here, unless you also want to point out that there was recently an RFC, specifically on that matter, with strong consensus to use the conventional-but-not-metric units,there too). Consistency is also consistency with sources, and, at least in the realm of aviation, those sources tend to consistently use feet and nautical miles. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:11, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian: You obviously have not read my profile. You are incorrect on the units used ouside the US and Canada, type Metar and the airport and you'll get what the pilot gets in Metar code (in bold below), for Haneda the airport in this particular article you get the following which changes every 30 or 60 minutes: RJTT 080530Z 03012KT 9999 FEW010 BKN015 BKN020 07/04 Q1015 NOSIG RMK 1CU010 5SC015 7SC020 A2998. Translation day 08, Time 0530Z 030/12kt Visibility more than 9999 metres, Few 1000, Broken 1500 Broken 2000, temp/dewpoint 07/04C Sea level pressure 1015 hPa. London Heathrow: EGLL 080452Z 0806/0912 12012KT 9999 FEW045 PROB30 TEMPO 0818/0822 8000 -RA BKN014 BECMG 0822/0901 BKN012 PROB40 TEMPO 0900/0907 BKN007 BECMG 0903/0906 18010KT BECMG 0908/0911 FEW020 The same as previously with the exception of temporary between 18:00-22:00 8000 m in light Rain. Here you will see the visibility of both airports is in metres and the pressure in hectopascals. In the US and Canada the visibility is in feet or statute miles with pressure in inches of mercury. In China, Russia and the former CIS the wind is in metres/second. Avi8tor (talk) 06:19, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

You are very much missing the point (yes, I can read METAR/TAF) - yes, metric is used for some measurements [although that is bordering on an off-topic tangent, as none of the measurements in the article are about QNH]. However, even today (much more so back 50 years ago), many critical measurements for basic flight information (speed, altitude, distance) are/were in non-metric units in most countries [Russia and the few countries which use/used metric flight levels are a special case, for probably a very good reason (the historical isolation of the USSR from Western standards during the Cold War), although obviously this didn't happen in Russia so we don't have to worry about what would be nothing but an off-topic tangent here]. Also, if you note, the report is published in the ICAO Circular (seemingly, an international publication aimed at the aviation industry, which would therefore likely use widely accepted standards, not just random units at the folly of whoever writes it); and if anything that does show (at the minimum) which units [seemingly, feet, nautical miles for flight distances, statute miles and feet for shorter distances; knots for speed) were standard at the time (surprisingly, the only one of those which appears to have changed is the use of metric for shorter distances). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:21, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

I have been advised of this discussion so I will weigh in. While aviation still generally uses feet (I suspect because thousand-foot increments allows for more flight levels than kilometric increments would (or even 100 m increments, but that latter one is probably too close for comfort even today), I think putting metric equivalents in the article is desirable as not all international readers will understand the English units, even if they are standard within aviation. Daniel Case (talk) 07:34, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think anybody was objecting to including the metric conversions - forcefully putting them first (in a misguided idea of "consistency"), when they are not the units used by the source, and when most of the time the aviation standards remain non-metric even today, however, is what irks me. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:21, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Consistency means putting the same unit as primary throughout the article. I think your comment about forcing metric is a bit absurd because it's you who is forcefully requiring non metric as primary, SI was previously primary in this article, the fact that the historial source is not metric is irrelevant. People do not say it's 0.8 kilometres away they say it's 800 metres . Being about aviation has nothing to do with it, 96% of the planet lives in a metric world which is why the MOS states unless it's the United States and in some circumstances Britain the SI unit will be primary because that is what's used worldwide. Every commonwealth country that speaks English is metric and anyone under 40 has no understanding of non metric. This also applies to non native speakers worldwide who read the English Wikipedia. Avi8tor (talk) 16:30, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

1) I live in a Commonwealth country (duh!) 2) I am under 40 3) I do have some understanding of non-metric (so your comment is rather obviously false on that point - a very clear hasty generalisation). As for your reading of the MOS, it is also defective, in that it specifically states that or such other units as are conventional in reliable-source discussions of the article topic (such as revolutions per minute (rpm) for rotational speed, hands for heights of horses, etc.). I don't think anybody can deny that non-metric units (as identified previously) are clearly conventional in reliable-source discussions of aviation-related subjects. Concerns about people being able to understand it seem unconvincing (since conversions are given and since it is not required for articles to be written with the lowest-common-denominator in mind), given that most of our audience is from English-speaking countries such as the US, Canada or England, I don't think much will have difficulties with units which are still used rather frequently (heck, even in French-speaking Quebec, there are plenty of examples of use of non-metric units - although that might have more to do with proximity to the US than anything else). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:42, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

I had forgotten Canada was a commonwealth country and thinking generally of former African colonies, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc. I had a conversation with young Australians who had not come across feet and inches and he was in his 30's, asking what it was in centimetres. Any country in proximity to the US is generally held back from going down the metric path. Africa junked the British system and South Africa made it illegal to import non metric rulers, tape measures, etc. probably in the late 60's early 70's, the result was there are now no imperial units around. I've found US and British publications to be unreliable sources if the original unit was metric, everything is rounded to xx feet or inches and then quoted verbatim with a conversion. Look at this picture from AP news shows 827 m2, conveniently close to 8900 ft2. The second is in the text below the picture where it becomes 930 m2 (10000 ft2). You have to hover over the picture or click on it to see the text. https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-middle-east-travel-israel-west-bank-2407e36f6e4302f2670798720008a457 Looking at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hisham%27s_Palace it’s 836 m2 (8998 ft2). The source here is from the Guardian in the UK with their source as Agence France Press (AFP). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28/huge-restored-mosaic-unveiled-in-jericho-desert-castle So which one is accurate? It seems possible the earlier text on the picture of 827 m2 but conveniently rounded to a nice round number in the latter two examples.Avi8tor (talk) 14:48, 10 March 2022 (UTC)