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Hello.
Plane rides are long except when they’re short.
Some are shorter than others especially the shortest one which is the most not long.
Thank you and goodnight.
Ah damn there’s four minutes left until the ad.
Let’s bring out the filler.
The longest commercial flight in the world is the 9,000 mile haul from Doha, Qatar to
Auckland, New Zealand.
It takes an astronomical 17 hours in which time you could fly the world’s shortest
flight 1,155 times or call Comcast customer support once.
In many cases it doesn’t make sense to fly a very short distance rather than drive unless
you enjoy physical proximity to others and being asked to take your pants off but in
such a case you could just ride the New York Subway at 11:30 on a Friday night.
In most cases you have to leave for the airport at least two hours before a flight in which
time you could drive 120 miles.
For that reason, flights under that distance are as rare as a female Half as Interesting
viewer and so therefore they only really exist if there’s an obstacle to driving.
The shortest commercial flight in the US, for example, is from San Francisco to Sonoma
County airport.
This flight is flown three times a day by bus company United Airlines and usually takes
only 16 minutes from takeoff in San Francisco to touchdown in Sonoma County.
At best the drive between these two places takes only an hour and fifteen minutes but
at worst the heat death of the universe happens and you never make it.
The flight costs a minimum of $354 one way which are prices high enough that you’d
think these planes would fly empty.
United Airlines has, though, with its 92 years of experience learned that flying planes empty
is bad for business.
The secret of this flight is that it isn’t made for traveling between San Francisco and
Sonoma County, it’s made for people coming from the rest of the country then connecting
onto this flight.
United actually prices a one-way flight from New York to Sonoma County via San Francisco
for only $169.
In that case, if you have a 45 minute connection then the 16 minute flight, it’s far quicker
than leaving the airport, getting a rental car, and driving through San Francisco to
Sonoma County.
Now that’s enough talk of United.
I want this video to take off and United’s just not very good at that.
While the Sonoma County flight is short, it’s longer than 7 feet.
It’s also longer than the world’s shortest flight.
All the world’s shortest flights are to or from islands as cars don’t work well
on water, boats are slow, and so even the shortest flights to islands make sense.
Scotland is a country, kind of, that has loads of islands—790 to be exact.
Many of the more inhabited islands have flights connecting them to the two largest Scottish
cities—Edinburgh and Glasgow.
There are some pretty unique ones worth mentioning like the one from Glasgow to Barra Airport.
This flight flies 140 miles so its short though not excessively short.
More than any other airport, pilots have reported that Barra Airport is a beach to land at.
As in, its difficult but also that its runway is just a beach.
It has a terminal and everything, but its the only commercial airport in the world where
planes land on the beach and, of course, the runway only exists for a few hours per day
as the planes can only land at low tide.
But this is all beside the point because elsewhere in Scotland is the actual shortest commercial
flight in the world.
The Orkney Islands lay north of mainland Scotland and are home to about 21,000 people.
They’re a relatively unknown bit of the UK despite being inhabited for over 8,500
years.
The population of the Orkneys is well spread out across the islands and some of the more
isolated ones like Papa Westray have only 90 residents and no more than one small store.
For healthcare and, in many cases, school, people have to go to capital of the Orkneys—Kirkwall.
There are boats to there but the fastest option to get between the islands is a rocket.
Barring that, the number two option is by plane.
On Mondays, for example, a plane leaves Kirkwall at 8:40 am then 13 minutes later, after traveling
27 miles, it touches down in Westray.
Soon after at 9:01, it takes off on what is the shortest commercial flight in the world.
The destination airport, Papa Westray, is a mere 1.5 miles away across a narrow body
of water so this flight takes as little as 53 seconds and crosses a distance shorter
than a typical airport runway definitively making it the shortest flight in the world.
Now, granted, this short flight exists so that passengers from both Westray and Papa
Westray can travel to Kirkwall on the same plane so most people don’t just fly between
these two islands but if they did wanted to they could.
At £17 or $22, the ticket is cheaper than an Apache Attack Helicopter, but this flight
costs about $15 per mile which is more per mile than it costs to fly from New York to
London in first class.
Now, if you find yourself in Westray with $22, you have a choice—you could use it
to fly to Papa Westray or you could use it to purchase the domain that is used to launch
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