Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft)

For article titles, use the most common unambiguous name. A central tenet of wikipedia naming conventions is to give articles names that will be have the greatest chance of being directly linked to within an edit window of another article. Alternative names should be listed in bold type on or near the first line of the article.

Create redirects from all the more common alternative names. For example, the main article for the Douglas DC-3 should be at Douglas DC-3; redirects to it at DC-3, C-47, Douglas Dakota, Gooney Bird and Gooney bird.

In general, the best names to use are:

• US military aircraft: Number and name. F-15 Eagle, P-47 Thunderbolt Where there is no name, or where the name is not in general use, use the manufacturer and number instead: Lockheed U-2, Convair B-36[?], General Dynamics F-111. Where there are many names, none of them clearly the most common, use manufacturer and number: Curtiss P-40, Douglas DC-3.

• UK aircraft: Manufacturer and name. Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Fury[?] Where there is no name, or the name is not in general use, use manufacturer and number: e.g., Avro 504[?], BAE 111[?].

• US civil aircraft: Manufacturer and name or number as appropriate according to common usage: Boeing 707, Cessna Citation[?], Cessna 172, Convair 880 (not "Convair Skylark" or "Convair Golden Arrow". Try to avoid using name and number unless it is clearly needed for some reason.

• Soviet aircraft: Manufacturer and number: Mikoyan MiG-21, Sukhoi Su-27, Tupolev Tu-144. (But there are exceptions: the Sturmovik is best known by that name.) Use of the NATO reporting name—which has nothing to do with the wishes of the people who designed, made, bought, and flew the aircraft—is offensive and should be avoided, though it can be mentioned as an alternative name in the text if appropriate.

• Japanese aircraft. Manufacturer and number: Nakajima B5N[?] or Kawasaki Ki-61[?]. Foreign reporting names like "Zeke", "Tony", "Betty" and "Kate" are offensive and should be avoided, but can be mentioned in the text where appropriate. We no longer write "Mao Tse-tung", we have learned to use "Mao Zedung". We can learn to use the proper Japanese names too.

• Mixed origin aircraft such as the BAE Hawk[?] made under licence by McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing as the T-45 Goshawk[?], or a great many Sikorsky helicopters made under licence by Westland need to be treated on their merits. Often, two seperate articles will be needed anyway - like the present Hawker Siddeley Harrier and AV-8 Harrier II. If not, primacy should usually go to the design manufacturer rather than the one making it under licence.

• Special cases Some aircraft are so well known that it makes more sense to break the usual rules. In theory, the Anglo-French supersonic airliner should be the Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde, but it is so well known as just Concorde that it is better to leave it there; the Mitsubishi A6M is universally known as the Mitsubishi Zero; the A-10 Thunderbolt II is far better (if less officially) known as the A-10 Warthog.

(This is a draft set of naming conventions. Feel free to edit it, or comment on the talk page)