Some radio songs run longer than this flight. In Scotland’s Orkney Islands, there’s a scheduled commercial air route that lasts, on average, 90 seconds from gate to gate: the hop between the islands of Westray and Papa Westray, separated by just 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) of sea. It’s officially the world’s shortest scheduled flight, and it’s been keeping neighbors connected since 1967.
Shorter than a TV ad break
Scottish airline Loganair runs the route with a small Britten-Norman Islander, a propeller plane that seats eight to ten passengers and is built precisely for short runways and the harsh weather these North Atlantic islands get hit with. Actual flying time usually hovers around 80 seconds, but the all-time record — set with an unusually helpful tailwind — belongs to pilot Stuart Linklater, who once completed the crossing in just 53 seconds. Linklater flew this exact route more than 12,000 times before retiring in 2013, which makes him something of a local legend: he’s probably crossed that stretch of sea more times than anyone else in history.
Why bother flying 2.7 kilometers?
It’s a fair question, but for the people who actually live there, this is no tourist gimmick — it’s the difference between being connected and being cut off. Papa Westray has around 90 residents and no bridge or tunnel links it to the rest of the archipelago: getting there by boat takes considerably longer and depends entirely on the sea being cooperative. The flight is the fast link to Westray and, from there, to Orkney’s main hub, Kirkwall, for everything a tiny community can’t have on hand — supplies, mail, medical appointments, you name it. A flight shorter than it takes to brew a coffee doesn’t make it any less serious business: it’s essential infrastructure wearing a Guinness World Record as a costume.
The certificate you get to keep
The route has held the Guinness World Records title for shortest scheduled commercial flight since the late 1960s, and Loganair leans into it with real flair: passengers get a signed certificate on landing, proof they’ve survived the shortest air journey on Earth. It’s not just a tourism gimmick either — although the novelty does draw in around 5,000 passengers a year — most tickets are still bought by locals, for whom those 90 seconds are about as routine as catching a bus.
Here’s the fun part: depending on the wind, the plane sometimes spends more time taxiing on the runway before takeoff than it does actually crossing the sea. So next time your flight gets delayed, spare a thought for Westray and Papa Westray — there, the problem is never that the flight drags on too long, it’s that you barely have time to buckle your seatbelt. You can read more about the flight and its history in this CNN Travel report.