this is the airport on papa westray one
of the smallest of the orkney islands
off the tip of scotland it is just a
windsock and a hut and a gravel runway
and i didn't pick a great day to travel
to this tiny little island uh the rain
is going to return in just a few minutes
but it's still a nice little trip out to
visit the world's oldest still-standing
house
it's raining sideways
and also watch some sea birds from quite
a distance that's a bird
that's a bird
that is also a bird but leaving here i'm
taking the world's shortest commercial
flight from this airport to the next
island a mile away which sounds like a
great video but as i started to write
the script i found some problems it's a
commercial flight and it's august 2021
as i record this so masks are required
which won't look great and
the planes in use on this route are
incredibly loud and rattly you wouldn't
hear a thing and i'm not gonna be the
jackass who's vlogging on a tiny little
plane with other passengers on it loudly
talking and bothering people and
accidentally poking a selfie stick in
someone's face i'm just gonna swap this
gopro out for a 360 camera and just
record voice over afterwards
but a video about commercial aviation
logistics
using voiceover well that doesn't sound
like me that sounds like something that
the wendover productions channel would
do so uh sam hey there tom i'm gonna
leave this up to you i'm gonna go catch
my flight spanning a distance of 1.7
miles or 2.7 kilometers over some 80 or
so seconds the flight tom's about to
take might seem an affront to logic
economics environmentalism and more but
the world's shortest flight has a very
real purpose for very real people you
see the orkney islands are a sparsely
populated archipelago
the vast majority of their 22 000 strong
population lives on what's known despite
its island status as the mainland
leaving only about four 000 on the outer
islands
these outer islanders need ways of
getting to the mainland of course but
bridges are expensive especially over
some of the longer intra island spans in
the orkneys and while fairies do operate
throughout the archipelago they're slow
and lack a direct connection to onward
travel
therefore the answer is airplanes
of course flying is expensive and in the
world of commercial aviation it's
typically the case that the lower the
demand the more expensive it is for an
airline to operate a route on a per
passenger basis
that's because smaller destinations lack
the economies of scale afforded by
operating larger airplanes more
frequently at larger airports so air
service to places with 600 or 90
residents like westray and papa westray
is essentially impossible on a free
market basis
the fares would be enormous per
passenger meaning people wouldn't choose
to fly meaning there wouldn't be enough
passengers to fill a plane therefore
flights to western papa westray are
subsidized through the uk's public
service obligation scheme meaning only a
small portion of loganeer's revenue is
earned through selling the flight's 17
or 18 pounds tickets
still filling a nine passenger plane to
papa westray in particular with its
person population
would be difficult
even at rock bottom prices price
elasticity only goes so far
therefore logan air uses a network
design referred to as a milk run
essentially it means operating a plane
like a bus or train in this case the bn2
islander aircraft leaves kirkwall the
largest town in the orkneys with
passengers destined for papa west ray
and westray
then it lands in papa westray drops off
any passengers destined for that island
and picks up any passengers traveling to
westray and kirkwall next it flies those
80 or so seconds to westray drops off
its passengers and picks up any final
travelers headed for kirkwall this way
it aggregates the cumulative demand of
two islands onto one flight allowing for
operations to each more regularly than
if they both had dedicated flights
altogether this means the only people
that might take the flight exclusively
between papa westray and westray are
aviation enthusiasts and tourists who
make the pilgrimage to fly on the
world's shortest commercial flight tom
however is returning to kirkwall
sam thank you so much there's a link to
sam's channel wendover productions in
the description and on screen and sure
enough the plane spent two minutes on
the ground while one passenger
disembarked and the pilot filled out
some paperwork and then we were off in
the air again
[Music]
you