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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 28 May 2024 [1].

Pan Am Flight 214

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Nominator(s): RecycledPixels (talk) 20:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pan Am Flight 214 was a Pan Am flight that crashed in December 1963 while flying between Baltimore, Maryland and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the first time that a jet aircraft operated by Pan Am had crashed in the five years that they had been flying, and the crash highlighted the previously unknown risks of lightning strikes on aircraft in flight, leading to new safety parameters in aircraft design. The article has been a Good Article since 2019 and I believe that it has improved to the level of Featured Article since then. Do you? RecycledPixels (talk) 20:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: If anybody performing a source review does not have access to the New York Times Archive articles, I can send them a link to a Google Drive directory of images of all the news clippings I used in the article. RecycledPixels (talk) 14:44, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PCN02WPS

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Saving a spot. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 21:53, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lead and infobox

Background

Accident

Aftermath

  • "east of Elkton near the state line" → don't think this is needed since you give the location of the crash site in the previous section
    Agree, and done. Also removed duplicate "crash site" from next sentence. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "was extinguish the fires and to begin collecting" → verbs read like they don't match; either "to extinguish" and "to begin" or "extinguish" and "begin"
    Agree, and done. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Investigation

  • "an impact 100 times as strong as the force of gravity (g)" → Recommend a link to g-force somewhere in here
    Done. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "its tape appeared to be hopelessly damaged" → might want to attribute this since it sorta sounds like WP's voice (and since it ended up being wrong)
    Wording was from the McClement source, but since the sentences afterward elaborated on the damage, I changed it to simply "had been badly damaged.", citing NY Times 12/11. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the aircraft apparently had caught fire close to its cruising altitude of 5,000 feet" → this caught me off-guard until I remembered that the flight was only from BWI to Philly - do you think a short little bit added on to the end of this sentence just noting the reason behind the low cruising altitude would be warranted/helpful? (Genuinely asking your opinion, I think it's good either way)
    I don't really have any more information than this, other than it actually flew at 4,000 feet as far as the New Castle VOR (which I assume was somewhere around Wilmington/New Castle, Delaware), then increased altitude to 5000 feet for the hold, west of the VOR. So not a very long flight, and none of the official reports or news reports made any comments about this being unusually low. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "disputed early theories that lightning" (plural), "explode, calling it improbable" (singular)
    As far as I can tell, there was only one lightning strike theory, so changed the first instance to singular. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "as a result of static electricity igniting fuel vapor" → link to static electricity could be helpful
    Done. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "left wing tip, and a large area of damage" → remove comma
    Done. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "turbine engines and was also present in Flight 214's fuel tanks" → if you're saying that Jet A was also there, I would change "and was also present" to "which was also present" or something similar
    Done. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Legacy

  • "including experts from the FAA, CAB, other government agencies and lightning experts" → reads like "including experts from...lightning experts", so recommend rewording "lightning experts" to before the list or adding something after "government agencies" so it doesn't sound like you're doubling up on the word "experts"
    Reworded.
  • "aircraft fuel systems, and potential measures" → remove comma
  • "lightning strikes, and published guidance" → remove comma
  • "and any items that are installed on the surface" → sounds a little weird going from past tense ("mandated") to present tense ("that are installed") though changing the latter to past tense doesn't sound right either; maybe just remove "that are" altogether?
    Agreed, and done. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "turbine fuels in civil aircraft operations."" → since the quote isn't a full sentence, the full stop should be outside the quotation marks per MOS:LQ
    This was raised earlier. The cited source reads: IN FEBRUARY 1964, the Federal Aviation Agency requested the Coordinating Research Council, Inc. (CRC) to carry out a "thorough and expert technical review. . .in regard to the safety hazards of turbine fuels in civil aircraft operations." CRC proceeded with the request by forming an Ad Hoc Group on Aviation Fuel Safety. The Group was composed of top engineers from the airframe, airline, and petroleum industries, selected because of their individual technical experience and ability. ... The period appears within the quotes in the source, and appears to be quoting exact text from the CRC request, which I don't have access to, which logically appears to be the end of the sentence. That's where I applied the "Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material" instruction from MOS:LQ, finding the punctuation within the cited source, and assuming that the punctuation existed where it did in the original source that the cited source was using. Any further opinions of that? RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "aviation fuels, and to determine" → remove comma
  • "likelihood of accidents and/or loss of life."" → ditto with full stop as above
    This was also brought up earlier. Since I am quoting a portion of a sentence, and not an entire sentence from the cited source (which wasn't identified as a direct quote in that source), I've moved the terminal period back outside the quotation marks. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your patience, sorry that this took so long for me to get to. Prose comments on first read-through are above! PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 20:25, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PCN02WPS: Thanks for the look. Let me know what you think, especially about the MOS:LQ issues. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The LQ bits look good to me; the explanation seems reasonable enough so I have no issue with it. All changes look good as well so I'm happy to support. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 16:24, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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  • /File:Boeing_707_"Stratoliner",_3rd_707-121_production_airplane,_N709PA,_later_delivered_to_Pan_Am.jpg: when and where was this first published?
  • File:Pan_Am_Flight_214_recorder_examination.jpg: source link is dead, when and where was this first published?
I am unable to verify the first image's claim as a public domain image. Searching online, I find this image all over the place, but I can't find anything that reliably backs up the public domain claim. So, I've replaced the image with a photo of a different Pan Am 707-121. It's not the same aircraft, but it serves the same purpose to identify the appearance of the aircraft involved. The FAA website at [2] has a free image of the actual aircraft in a hangar, but it's fairly low quality and resolution, and does not show the entire aircraft.
I wasn't able to verify the second image, either. It was likely published by the Civil Aeronautics Bureau as a press release, but I can't find evidence of that in any reasonable amount of time. Since it was a photo in the "nice to have" category, but not essential, I have removed it altogether.
I have updated the author information on the third photo. It appears in the CAB accident report, and also appears on the FAA website at [3] without a copyright notice.
Thanks for the catches. I checked the licenses on Commons but didn't try to take the extra step of trying to prove the information claimed there. RecycledPixels (talk) 07:04, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

750h

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Great article. My [minor] concerns are marked here:

Harry

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  • Terminating punctuation goes outside quote marks (MOS:LQ)
  • The detached engine fell into a field on a farm southwest of Paris, where the flight had originated, with no injuries "it fell into a field with no injuries" doesn't really make sense.
  • The detail on the 1949 Cessna incident seems a little excessive—I found myslef reading through lots of information about places and aircraft that weren't involved in the incident that is the subject of the article.
  • occurred on June 26, 1959, when TWA Flight 891, a Lockheed L-1649 Starliner, crashed near Milan, Italy I don't think the plane involved in that incident is essential to understanding this one; also, we don't generally link country names
  • Investigators found multiple lightning strike marks on the left wing tip Of Flight 214? The previous sentence is about 891.

That's all I've got. Nice article on an interesting incident from the (fairly) early days of commercial aviation. Haven't checked references. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:20, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • @HJ Mitchell: Thanks for taking a look. The terminal punctuation was present in the original Harris source, so I've moved them inside the quotes per MOS:LQ. I removed the part about no injuries caused by the falling engine as it wasn't important. I've tried to tighten up the 1949 Cessna incident, leaving the redlink to the accident article that doesn't yet exist, trimming out the aircraft type and the location as not being terribly important in this context. I mentioned the aircraft type in the Italy case to make the distinction that that incident wasn't also a Boeing 707, but a different type of aircraft altogether (piston-engined). Italy isn't wikilinked, the link goes to Milan. I've clarified that the lightning strike marks were found on the Flight 214 incident. See what you think. RecycledPixels (talk) 23:03, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    LGTM. Support. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:54, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support from RoySmith

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I may come back with more later, but for now, just a few comments.

  • For the NY Times refs, I think you'd do better to link to the archive page (i.e. https://www.nytimes.com/1963/12/09/archives/81-on-jet-killed-in-flaming-crash-near-elkton-md-airliner-plummets.html?searchResultPosition=1) instead of the raw page image (https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/12/09/issue.html). People can then click through to the timesmachine image with the article highlighted.
    It's still subscription required, so it doesn't make it any more accessible. In any event, the reference is the newspaper itself, published on dead trees. The links are provided for convenience, if you have access to a NYT subscription, it's a bonus, and it's how I accessed the archives, so it was simple enough for me to include the URL. It's not perfect, as each of the links only go to page 1 of that day's newspaper, but the citation includes the page number. But there are other ways to access the same material, either by printed copies, Internet archives, microfilm, or web transcriptions. The citations would be just as valid without any links at all.
    The goal here is to provide the best experience for the reader, not minimal compliance with the rules. As you pointed out in my comment further down about a NY Times URL pointing to the wrong day's paper, yes, you are corect, I got that wrong. But part of the reason I got it wrong is because it was difficult to find the proper page by manually flipping through the images. Had you provided more accurate URLs, that wouldn't have happened. But if you're looking for a rule, WP:CITEWEB says URL of the specific web page where the referenced content can be found. If that's good enough for {{cite web}} then it's certainly good enough for {{cite news}}.
    You're citing WP:CITEWEB, which is how to cite web pages. The citations are from newspaper articles that appeared in 1963. There was no website back then. No web at all. If you click on the CITEWEB you linked to, and scroll up to the previous section, "Newspaper articles", you see that citations for newspaper articles typically include: byline, if any; title of the article; name of the newspaper; city of publication if not included in the name of the newspaper; date of publication; page number(s) are optional and may be substituted with negative numbers on microfilm reels. All of the citations to the newspaper article that I have included also include a URL to the New York Times archive site, which is one of ways you can get to an easy-to-access digital reproduction of that newspaper article. I'm sorry that you have to flip through pages to get to the page number that I have identified in the citation, but it's still a heck of a lot easier than going to the library and sifting through bins of old newspapers. I am not going to modify the included URLs to reference a different archive that I did not use because it's more convenient for you, because what about the user who doesn't have a subscription to the Times website, but their library has microfilm, should I be required to also reference the location of each article on their library's version of the microfilm so they don't have to look for it? The citations include specific details of how to access each of the sources used in the work. The fact that you have been able to access each of those articles using a different method than the one I have provided shows that the information contained in each of those citations is sufficient for verification. RecycledPixels (talk) 16:54, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "It operated three times a week as the counterpart to Flight 213, which flew from Philadelphia to San Juan via Baltimore earlier the same day." I would drop that entire sentence; it doesn't add anything to the reader's understanding of this accident.
    I have removed it.
  • For airports which have changed names, i.e. Isla Verde -> Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, Friendship -> BWI, I would mention their current names to give the reader better context, as those are the names the reader is likely to know.
    The reader can use the provided wikilinks to the airports to find out the naming history of each of the airports, either by hovering over them with the mouse (my preferred method) or by clicking on them.
  • "It wasn’t a large fire ... from the force of the impact" I think long quotes like this are better presented with {{blockquote}} vs running in-line. Also, the source identifies him as "Lt. Don Hash (Retired)" so we should do the same.
    Changed per MOS:BLOCKQUOTE. The identification of the speaker as "a Maryland state trooper" is sufficient as Lt. Don Hash is not mentioned anywhere else in the article and did not serve a significant role other than having been the first to arrive at the crash scene.
  • "The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was notified of the accident and was dispatched from Washington, D.C". The whole board wasn't dispatched, just "a team of investigators" (from the NYT source)
    Clarified.
  • "Witnesses of the crash described hearing the explosion and seeing the plane in flames as it descended" I know this is what the source says, but I'm vaguely uncomfortable in how this is presented. Witnesses to air crashes are notoriously unreliable; it's not uncommon for witnesses to describe events (in-flight breakup, fire, etc) which are inconsistent with the physical evidence. Notice how on page 4 of the CAB report, they hedge with "aircraft or flaming object in the sky", and are careful to point out how many people reported seeing which things. Compare this with the narrative on page 11, where the CAB goes out of their way to describe some of the witnesses as "particularly well qualified" observers. I'm not sure how this should be presented, but your current version I think needs to better emphasize that "witnesses say they saw X" does necessarily mean "X happened".
    I'm not sure I understand this objection, as according to the CAB report, 99 of 140 witnesses described seeing a flaming object in the sky and one of the flight crew of a nearby flight radioed in "Clipper 214 is going down in flames". I'm not sure how "Witnesses of the crash described hearing the explosion and seeing the plane in flames as it descended" is inconsistent with that, and I don't think it would help the article by trying to break that collective statement into the statements of each individual witness, or irrelevant facts like 48 of the witnesses describing the actual parts of the aircraft that they saw to be in flames as the plane went down.
  • "An investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board concluded that the cause of the crash was a lightning strike that had ignited fuel vapors in one of the aircraft's fuel tanks, causing an explosion that destroyed one of the wings." I should have put this first, because it's the most important: the CAB said no such thing. What they said was "the probable cause of this accident was lightning -induced ignition of the fuel/air mixture ..." The use of the "probable cause" terminology is critical.
    Added "probable" to the lead section. RecycledPixels (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Related to the previous item, "fuel/air mixture" is not the same as "fuel vapors". A "vapor" is a gas. A fuel/air mixture could be atomized (but still liquid) fuel, i.e. an Aerosol. It may sound like a minor point, but it's actually quite important, as fuel cannot ignite until it undergoes the liquid->gas phase change.
    "...fuel cannot ignite until it undergoes the liquid->gas phase change." The explosion of the aircraft demonstrates that some degree of phase change had occurred. I will concede that it was likely only the vapors that ignited and not the fuel/air vapors that had not yet gone through the phase change. However, the CAB report discusses at length the potential risk to aircraft by the potential ignition of fuel vapors within the fuel tanks and fuel system. See, for example, page 7, "lightning discharges can be hazardous to aircraft fuel systems by possibly igniting the fuel vapor within the tanks.", on page 8, "In addition, flame can propagate through the vent system, from fuel vapors ignited at the vent outlet by direct strokes ...", page 9, "Expert testimony at the hearing indicated that the fuel vapors in the air spaces of the tanks were well within the flammable range at the time of the accident" and so on. For the purposes of a reader understanding this article, the causes and results of investigations, "fuel vapors" gives a sufficient amount of technical precision and is enough of a synonym of "fuel/air micture" in this instance to be used interchangeably. RecycledPixels (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The plane entered a sudden spin during a demonstration of the aircraft's minimum control speed". I know the NY Times source says "spin", but I'm dubious that a swept-wing jet like a 707 is capable of recovering from a spin. I suspect, regardless of what the NY Times (UPI, actually) wrote, the plane never actually entered a fully developed Spin (aerodynamics). Also, you say, "aerodynamic forces caused the engine to break away". Nowhere in the source does it say that. The source says, "A Pan American World Airlines spokesman said the right outboard engine had torn loose". "Torn loose" does not imply "aerodynamic forces". Not to mention that you've taken a statement from an unnamed Pan Am spokesman and restated it in wiki-voice. Actually, I'm going to keep going on this one. You said it was an "incident". The source doesn't say that. In aviation, the terms "incident" and "accident" have very specific meanings, see Aviation accidents and incidents. You can't just use the terms without understanding what they mean.
    There's a lot here. I'm dubious that a swept-wing jet like a 707 is capable of recovering from a spin. I suspect, regardless of what the NY Times (UPI, actually) wrote, the plane never actually entered a fully developed Spin (aerodynamics). You may be right. However, the cited article states, "a Pan American World Airways spokesman said the right outboard engine had been torn loose when the craft went into a sudden spin during a deliberate demonstration of minimum control speed." I feel that, in the absence of any other sources to the contrary, the spokesman of the airline that owned the aircraft at the time when speaking specifically about the incident, is a sufficiently reliable source of what happened. It is also likely that the source was using the term "spin" in a conventional sense to refer to uncommanded yaw rather than the precise aeronautical definition you've linked to.
    I've struck part of my earlier comment. I was trying to make a point but the way I phrased it was a bit testy, for which I apologize. RoySmith (talk) 14:53, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    "Torn loose" does not imply "aerodynamic forces".. I have removed the reference to aerodynamic forces because I don't have a source for it in my clippings and I don't recall where I got that terminology. The phrases "torn loose" and "break away" are sufficiently close that the break away phrasing is sufficient without being over-repetitive of the "torn" phrasing that appears in the previous sentence.
    Not to mention that you've taken a statement from an unnamed Pan Am spokesman and restated it in wiki-voice. An official company spokesman, speaking specifically on the incident in question, appearing in a reliable source, reprinted via an international wire service, and never contradicted since then, said it happened.
    You said it was an "incident". The source doesn't say that. In aviation, the terms "incident" and "accident" have very specific meanings, see Aviation accidents and incidents. You can't just use the terms without understanding what they mean. I have a sufficient understanding of the terms to know what they mean, and in this case, the use of "incident" is appropriate, both in the common use of the word used here as well as the more precise definition in an aviation context that you are referring to.
  • Also about the previous item, there's nothing in the source which says that was the same airplane as this crash.
    Citation added.
  • I'm curious about the statement you made above, in response to a comment from PCN02WPS" I don't really have any more information than this, other than it actually flew at 4,000 feet as far as the New Castle VOR. What source says it was at the New Castle VOR? Oh never mind, it's in the CAB report. RoySmith (talk) 19:10, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • " Investigators ... also said that the plane would have had to dive a considerable distance before aerodynamic forces would have been severe enough to cause it to break up and explode". You are misquoting the source. The source says, "It is believed that a plane would probably have to dive a considerable distance before it would break up in a violent maneuver and catch fire". There's nothing there about "aerodynamic forces" or exploding.
    I've removed the phrase aerodynamic force. I've left in the part about exploding because the whole cited article talked about the explosion of the aircraft.
  • "The recovery of the wreckage took place over a period of 12 days, and 16 truckloads of the debris were taken ..." => "The recovery of the wreckage took 12 days; 16 truckloads of debris were taken ..." (or maybe "... with 16 truckloads of debris taken ...")
    Made the first suggested edit, not the second. The reconfiguration of the sentence with a semicolon is not an improvement.
  • "Testimony from eyewitnesses confirmed", per my comments above about the reliability of eye-witness reports, replace "confirmed" with "corroborated", "supported" or something similar.
    Changed to "Eyewitnesses had seen that the plane had been burning on its way down to the crash site."
  • "an airplane is typically struck by lightning once or twice a year without causing any problems." This should be clarified. Does it mean that there are typically 1 or 2 strikes per year in total across the fleet, or that on average, any particular airplane can be expected to get 1 or 2 strikes? Also the FAA Lessons Learned citation needs a more specific location, i.e. what section heading.
    "An airplane" refers to a specific airplane. "Airplanes" would have referred to the entire fleet. The "Accident Overview" section of the site is identified in the citation.
  • "Scientists and airline industry representatives disputed the early theory that lightning could have caused the aircraft to explode, calling it improbable". The source is a human-interest story written 50 years after the crash by a writer who appears to have no expertese writing about aviation. It quotes unnamed "scientists". It's not even clear if it's one scientist or several. And there's no mention of "airline industry representatives". I would drop this entirely.
    Added additional citation to the FAA Lessons Learned website to that sentence. Changed "scientists" to "experts".
  • Hudson, Edward (February 26, 1964). "F.A.A. Will Study Jet Fuel Safety". The New York Times. p. 21. Retrieved May 8, 2019. the URL points to the wrong edition of the paper (it should be the 27th; https://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/27/archives/pan-am-to-test-fuel-safeguard-aim-is-to-prevent-explosion-believed.html?searchResultPosition=1)
    The "Pan Am to Test Fuel Safeguard" article appeared the next day. It isn't the same as the "F.A.A. Will Study Jet Fuel Safety" article from February 26 article by the same author, but the article you are referring to is separately used as the "nytimes0227" named source in the article.
    Something is still not making sense here. You have: <ref name="nytimes0227">{{cite news | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1964/02/26/issue.html | title = Pan Am To Test Fuel Safeguard | newspaper= The New York Times | page = 63 | date = 27 February 1964 | access-date = 8 May 2019 | last=Hudson | first = Edward | url-access=subscription}}</ref>. The date parameter says it's the 27th, but the URL is for the 26th.
    Missed that, thanks. RecycledPixels (talk) 15:57, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Seconds later, the first officer of National Airlines Flight 16, holding 1,000 feet (300 m) higher in the same pattern, radioed, "Clipper 214 is going down in flames" The source does not say that National 16 was holding. Nor does it give any timing information which supports "Seconds later".
    Added additional citation to page 2 of the CAB report which identifies the timing of the statement as well as what National Airlines Flight 16 was doing at the time.
  • "Built to withstand an impact 100 times as strong as the force of gravity (g), it had been subjected to a force of 200 g". The source says, "built to withstand 100 Gs ... had apparently been slapped with double that amount of force". You have turned the source's "apparently" into an unequivocal statement of fact in wiki voice. Also, g is a unit of acceleration, not force. It's wrong in the source, but we don't have to repeat their error.
    Removed McClement reference, added New York Times citation that simply stated that it had suffered from forces greater than it had been designed to withstand and rephrased.
  • "The FAA also said that it would conduct research to determine the relative safety of the two types of jet fuel used in the United States ... Jet B ... Jet A". The source talks about kerosine and JP-4. In fact, kerosine is Jet-A and JP-4 is Jet-B, but a reader looking up the source would probably not know that. You need to add something which gives these name equivalents (with a RS, of course)
    I have not referred to the fuel as JP-4 anywhere in the article. The FAA appears to be the only party that changed the terminology from Jet B to JP-4. I don't know if it was correct at the time, but when I look it up now, I learn that JP-4 is a military fuel that is Jet B with additional anti-icing and corrosion inhibitors. The CAB report, page 2, states that tanks 1 and 4 main and reserve tanks had 69 percent Jet B, tanks 2 and 3 had 5 percent Jet B, and the center tank had 100 percent Jet B. In a letter to the FAA on December 17, 1963, attached to the CAB report as Attachment II, Leon Tanguay, Director the Bureau of Safety of the CAB stated, in the second paragraph, that the aircraft was loaded with a 68/32 Jet A/Jet B mixture, and, as item 5, that the FAA consider the flammability differences between Jet A and Jet B. In the George Moore's (Director of Flight Standards Service at the FAA) reply dated March 12, 1964, attached to the CAB report as Attachment III, states "the questions which have been raised concerning the relative safety of JP-4, kerosene, and mixes of the two are being studied". I believe the February 26, 1964, article in New York Times article was simply referencing FAA sources that perhaps incorrectly substituted "JP-4" for "Jet B". The study that resulted from the FAA's request, cited as Harris 1965, referred to it as "Jet B (JP-4)" the first couple of times in the article, but then referred to it exclusively as "Jet B" after that. A reader interested in the differences between JP-4 and Jet B can glean that information from the Jet B article, I don't think a discussion in this accident article is necessary.
    Look at this from the reader's point of view. You have a discussion of how Jet-A and Jet-B compare for safety, and cite a source for this. The reader wants to find out more about this so they click on the reference. This gets them to an article which is talking about how kerosine compares to JP-4, which appears to have nothing to do with how Jet-A compares to Jet-B. So it needs some kind of clarification to help the reader understand how the cited reference relates to what's in the article.
    Mentioned JP-4 with a citation to a different article that mentions the same fuel safety concern, but identifies that the fuel names were used interchangeably.
  • The links for Jet A and Jet B in the article both point to redirect pages for Jet fuel. They should point directly to the appropriate sections within Jet fuel.
    I have gone ahead and modified each of those redirect articles to point to the appropriate sections of the Jet fuel article.
  • "hoping reduce the risk of ignition" ->"hoping TO reduce"
    Fixed.
  • As an aside, Arthur O. Austin did some early research on the effects of lighting on aircraft; there may be something there that's worth mentioning here. Not to mention, that's currently in the queue for WP:PR if you've got time :-)
    I have addressed the concerns that you have expressed, feel free to take another look. RecycledPixels (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi Roy, how is this looking now? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:21, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gog the Mild I'll have to go back and give this another look, but as I remember, the only things that were still a sticking point for me was the NY Times citations and the use of the word "spin". On the first item, RecycledPixels seemed invested in doing them in a way that I didn't think was acceptable so I put this on the back burner.
    On the second, yes, I know UPI used the word spin, and attributed it to a Pan Am spokesperson, but I don't put a lot of credence in the technical details when general-audience sources like UPI report on technical topics. I did a bunch of research after my last comments here and couldn't find anything which wasn't traceable to the same UPI report. My gut feeling is that we would do better to just not mention the word "spin" at all. RoySmith (talk) 20:45, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Roy. RP, are we at an impasse, or are you able to address Roy's concerns? Gog the Mild (talk) 21:10, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On the New York Times citations, I'll remove the web links, if it will make you feel better. These are citations to newspapers, not web pages. They'd be perfectly accurate without having any weblinks at all. I find that having an online link to an archived copy is useful, but I'm not going to cater to any reviewer's personal preference on which archive to link to. As far as the word "spin", what would you prefer? RecycledPixels (talk) 01:26, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How about 'The plane was reported to have entered a sudden spin'? Gog the Mild (talk) 17:04, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From my point of view, that's fine. It is certainly a true statement that it was reported to have entered a spin, and avoids saying something in wiki voice which is rather dubious.
Done. RecycledPixels (talk) 20:27, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As for removing the web links, well, I didn't respond to that yet because I wasn't sure how to say this. Just removing the links you have now would be an absurd way forward. How would that possibly improve things from the point of view of the reader (which is the only point of view that matters). Our job here is not to slavishly follow the letter of some policy. Nor to make me feel better. Our job is to provide the best possible experience for the reader.
We accept that URLs are not required because we know that not all material is available on-line. But if it is available on-line, it makes sense to provide the user with the information, and to provide it in the most useful way. What I don't understand is why you're so invested in doing it the way you are doing it now. You clearly have the right URLs already. If you found those articles via either via a google search or the NY Times search function, you got them in your search results. All you need to do is paste them into the references. I see you've been working on User:RecycledPixels/sandbox/Mohawk Airlines Flight 121. You cite two NY Times articles there, both using the style of URL I'm advocating. Those URLs get you (assuming you have a subscription) to a page with the article highlighted in the page image, a bunch of useful metadata, and even a link to a PDF version of the article which for some users will be a more convenient way to read it. Just do it here like you did there. RoySmith (talk) 18:33, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I will work on it. RecycledPixels (talk) 20:27, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That method that I used on User:RecycledPixels/sandbox/Mohawk Airlines Flight 121 was a simple change that I was able to make easily, and I have made those URL changes to the article. It's different from the method you asked for at the beginning of the thread. I guess I misunderstood what you were asking for, because I just didn't see any problem with the Times Machines Archives, but you had been asking me to perform a whole new search for each article on the NY Times archive search website and link to the search results there instead, which was this instead of this. That wasn't the method I used to retrieve the articles in the first place, and would have been a real pain in the tail to generate, for no benefit. The method I used on the Mohawk Airlines Flight 121 sandbox (and here, now) was just to click on the article in the Times Machine page, then click on the permalink in the left panel. Simple. Obviously I figured out how to do it when I was saving those Mohawk sources, but then forgot all about that ability. RecycledPixels (talk) 20:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. That satisfies the last of my objections. RoySmith (talk) 14:39, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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Kind of wonder if Aviation Safety Network is WP:USERGENERATED. What makes "Window on Cecil County's Past." a reliable source? Kind of wonder about "McClement, Fred (1969). It Doesn't Matter Where You Sit. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. ISBN 0030765102. " too as it reads like advocacy. On the spin question, does the UPI report show the spokesperson's words verbatim? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:14, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ASN includes a lot of stuff, the ASN accident database is just one of their products. ASN is a child of Flight Safety Foundation which is a well-respected industry organization, so I'm predisposed to accept the ASN accident database as probably reliable for factual material, although I think you need to evaluate each entry on its own merits. In the case of the report cited here, it's basically a dump from the CAB report. There's nothing controversial here so I don't see any reason to nit-pick about the reliability of ASN, but on the other hand, it probably makes more sense to just cite the underlying CAB report directly. The only thing missing is that CAB doesn't appear to refer to the plane by it's 'Clipper Tradewind' name; you might need another source for that. RoySmith (talk) 13:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The facts cited from McClement are:
  • The costs of the CAB's investigations rarely exceeded $10,000, but the agency would spend about $125,000 investigating this crash (equivalent to $1,200,000 in 2023), not including the money spent by Boeing, the FAA, Pratt & Whitney, and other aircraft-part suppliers during additional investigations, from page 31 of the book.
  • Investigators examining Flight 214 found multiple lightning strike marks on the left wing tip and a large area of damage that extended along the rear edge of the wing, leading them to conclude that lightning was indeed the cause from page 34
  • Within a week of the crash, the FAA issued an order requiring the installation of static electricity dischargers on the approximately 100 Boeing jet airliners that had not already been so equipped. from page 22, also cited to New York Times 18 Dec 1963
  • Fuel-vent flame arrestors were added to aircraft to detect and discharge fire suppressant to extinguish fuel vapors that ignite at the fuel-vent outlets. cited to page 36, also cited to FAA Lessons learned
  • The minimum thickness of the aluminum surfaces of aircraft wings was increased to reduce the potential for lightning to completely melt through a wing surface into the wing's internal components and fuel tanks. also from page 36 and also cited to FAA lessons learned.
None of the statements contain any type of advocacy. The Boston Globe (12 Sep 1969, page 16, "Aviation expert guest speaker at 1st session") identifies the author as the aviation editor of the Toronto Daily Star for 20 years, and "a recognized expert in aviation and a crusader in the field of airline safety", so I think the book should be considered pretty reliable even if there were advocacy statements, but there wasn't a need in this article.
The "First Emergency Responder to Arrive on Scene of 1963 Plane Crash Recalls Tragic Night" website is used as a citation of a direct quote of Lt. Don Hash, the first responder on the scene. That website contains an audio recording of Lt. Hash making the statements, so it should be considered a reliable source for that narrow purpose. None of the other content of that site is cited in this article. I've updated the citation template to include the time location in the recording where he makes that statement, although I may have done it wrong. I also made a minor edit to the quoted text in the article.
Aviation Safety Network has been discussed in the past at the Aviation Project, and is listed on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Resources reliable sources page. RecycledPixels (talk) 15:47, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I missed the last part of the question about the word "spin". The paragraph from the New York Times article (UPI wire) says, "A Pan American World Airways spokesman said the right outboard engine had been torn loose when the craft went into a sudden spin during a deliberate demonstration of minimum control speed. He said the pilot had righted the plane immediately at 8,000 feet and flown to Lonson on three engines with no difficulty". Misspelled London in original. RecycledPixels (talk) 18:11, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note that I've started having some doubts about the reliability of the ASN source, so I have replaced all of the citations to that site with citations from other sources, and raised my concern on the Aviation Project page. RecycledPixels (talk) 20:49, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Jo-Jo, are you able to revisit? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 21:33, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems OK now, although one wonders why the CAB investigation was more expensive than usual. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:33, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Drive-by comments

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  • "had ignited fuel vapors in one of the aircraft's fuel tanks, causing an explosion that destroyed one of the wings". "... one of the ... one of the ..." Is it possible to vary the language for one of these? Gog the Mild (talk) 18:18, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of editors aren't. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:15, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]


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