Is the "airlines" tag needed?

Question

airlines Current definition:

Companies or organizations that transport passengers and/or cargo by air.

airline-operations Current definition:

Refers to questions asking about airline practices, procedures, and processes both in the employment arena and in flight.

Currently there are 28 airlines questions and 139 airline-operations questions. I think airlines should have a more thoughtful description for it to be useful, but I haven't been able to define exactly what I think it should include. What exactly does the "airlines" tag cover that airline-operations doesn't?

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Note: In the airline family of tags, there are also:

• airline-pilot
• airliner

Answer 1

I think there is a distinction: this question is about airlines, but not airline operations. It's vaguely similar to our tags for the FAA and FAA regulations: one is for questions about the organization itself, the other is for questions about the regulations created by that organization.

For me, the difference and therefore the tags are valid, although I do think that the tag definitions could be improved. It's also possible that the tags are not really well applied right now.

I actually think the 'meta-issue' here is that we don't have a very clear policy on what belongs here and what belongs on travel.SE. I have the impression that many contributors here are focused on the technical aspects of aviation, whereas to 'outsiders' looking for answers, an aviation site is the obvious place to ask about airline business practices. That difference is why we probably need both tags: there's always going to be a grey area (or overlap) and the tags make a useful distinction, in my opinion. YMMV, of course.