The world's shortest scheduled flight lasts just 90 seconds and covers 2.7 km — with a 53-second record. Full ranking of the 10 shortest passenger routes, distances, aircraft and block times.
The shortest scheduled commercial flight in the world is Loganair's Westray to Papa Westray service in Scotland's Orkney Islands: a great-circle distance of 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) with a scheduled block time of 1 minute 30 seconds. The Guinness World Record for actual airborne time on this route stands at 53 seconds, set on 27 September 1991 by Captain Andrew Alsop in a Britten-Norman Islander.
While the world's longest flight (Singapore Airlines JFK to Singapore) keeps passengers airborne for nearly 19 hours, the shortest is over before most passengers finish buckling their seatbelt. These are not novelty routes. Every flight on this ranking exists because a sea crossing is slow, weather-blocked, or impossible — and the aircraft is essential public transport for the island community it serves.
All distances on this page are great-circle distances calculated with the Haversine formula, using airport reference coordinates from OpenStreetMap. Block times are the operating airline's published schedule. The flight itself is typically 30 to 60 seconds shorter than the schedule because taxi and lineup time is included on paper.
Ranked 1 to 5: (1) Westray to Papa Westray, Loganair, Britten-Norman Islander, 2.7 km / 1.7 mi, 1m 30s scheduled — Orkney, Scotland. (2) Caye Caulker to San Pedro, Tropic Air, Cessna 208 Caravan, 13 km / 8 mi, 8 minutes — Belize. (3) Manihi to Ahe, Air Tahiti, ATR 42-600, 14 km / 9 mi, 10 minutes — French Polynesia. (4) Anguilla to St. Maarten, Winair, DHC-6 Twin Otter, 25 km / 15 mi, 10 minutes — Caribbean. (5) St. Barthélemy to St. Maarten, Winair, DHC-6 Twin Otter, 27 km / 17 mi, 12 minutes — Caribbean.
Ranked 6 to 10: (6) St. Barthélemy to Anguilla, St Barth Commuter, Britten-Norman Islander, 30 km / 19 mi, 12 minutes — Caribbean. (7) Barra to Benbecula, Loganair, DHC-6 Twin Otter, 45 km / 28 mi, 15 minutes — Outer Hebrides, Scotland. (8) St. Mary's to Land's End, Isles of Scilly Skybus, DHC-6 Twin Otter, 45 km / 28 mi, 15 minutes — England. (9) Kirkwall to North Ronaldsay, Loganair, Britten-Norman Islander, 48 km / 30 mi, 15 minutes — Orkney, Scotland. (10) Nassau to Andros Town, Western Air, Saab 340B, 65 km / 40 mi, 20 minutes — Bahamas.
Loganair's inter-island service in Orkney is scheduled at 90 seconds between Westray and Papa Westray, but the actual airborne time depends entirely on the wind. On 27 September 1991, Captain Andrew Alsop landed at Papa Westray 53 seconds after take-off from Westray in a Britten-Norman Islander. Guinness World Records has recognised it as the shortest scheduled airline flight ever completed.
The flight is a leg of a longer inter-island loop that also connects Kirkwall (the Orkney mainland hub) to Sanday, Stronsay, North Ronaldsay, Eday, and Papa Westray. Locals treat it as a bus route. A single-leg ticket costs around £21 one-way in 2026, and passengers can be checked in and airborne within ten minutes of walking into the terminal because the airfield has no security queue and the aircraft carries eight passengers maximum.
Every route on this ranking is either an island crossing where the ferry is slow, weather-blocked, or unreliable, or an inter-island network that connects small communities to a regional hub. None of them make commercial sense on distance alone. A 2.7 kilometre flight burns roughly 5 litres of fuel; the fuel cost per passenger is dwarfed by landing fees, aircraft depreciation, and pilot pay.
In Orkney and the Outer Hebrides the flights are subsidised as Public Service Obligation routes — regional lifelines that connect small communities to schools, hospitals, and the Scottish mainland. In the Caribbean and French Polynesia the calculus is different: a 12-minute flight from St. Barthélemy to St. Maarten replaces a 90-minute crossing on a small ferry that is regularly cancelled by ocean swell, and connects onto long-haul flights that do not serve smaller airfields directly.
Two aircraft types operate almost every route on this list. The Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander is a British-designed 8-seat, twin-piston-engine airliner that first flew in 1965 and remains in production. It needs only 300 metres of grass to take off with a full load, cruises at 240 km/h, and can operate from unpaved strips — perfect for Orkney's grass runways at Westray, Papa Westray, and North Ronaldsay.
The de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter is a 19-seat turboprop with short take-off performance and a rugged reputation. It flies the Anguilla, St. Barts, Barra, and Isles of Scilly routes, and is the workhorse of island aviation from the Maldives to the Falklands. In Barra, the runway is an actual beach — flight times are dictated by the tide.
Passengers on the Westray to Papa Westray flight describe the same rhythm: doors close, engines run up, take-off roll of about 15 seconds, a brief climb to roughly 150 metres, an immediate turn onto final approach, and touchdown on the grass at Papa Westray. There is no cruise phase. Cabin crew do not exist — the pilot handles both aircraft and passengers. There is no seatbelt sign because the seatbelt sign is on for the entire flight.
Loganair still gives every passenger who completes the sector a signed certificate. Frequent flyers on the route — often islanders commuting to work — collect them in bulk. On the busiest week of the year (typically August), the flight operates six rotations a day in each direction.
The shortest scheduled commercial flight is Loganair's Westray to Papa Westray service in Scotland's Orkney Islands. The great-circle distance is 2.7 km (1.7 miles) and the scheduled block time is 1 minute 30 seconds. The Guinness World Record for actual airborne time on this route is 53 seconds, set on 27 September 1991.
The Britten-Norman Islander used on the route cruises at about 240 km/h (150 mph), but almost none of a 2.7 km flight is spent at cruise speed. Most of the profile is climb and descent, and the wheels are only in the air for about 60 seconds on average.
Yes, but only slightly. A one-way ticket on Loganair's Westray to Papa Westray is around £21 in 2026, compared to about £11 for the equivalent Orkney Ferries sailing. Passengers pay the premium because the ferry can be cancelled by weather and takes 90 minutes door-to-door versus roughly 15 minutes for the flight (including check-in and walk to the aircraft).
Not on scheduled commercial airlines. Shorter hops exist as charter operations, seaplane tours, and helicopter transfers, but they are not sold as scheduled passenger tickets on published timetables. Papa Westray remains the record-holder because Loganair sells it as a normal booking on a normal airline schedule.
Yes. Loganair sells Westray to Papa Westray one-way tickets and issues a signed certificate to every passenger who completes the sector. It has become a bucket-list item, and Loganair reports several thousand novelty passengers per year on top of the roughly 12,000 residents and workers who use it as regular transport.
Scotland's Orkney and Outer Hebrides archipelagos combine strong prevailing winds (which make ferries unreliable in winter), scattered small islands, and a long-standing government commitment to fund Public Service Obligation air routes. The result is a dense inter-island network operated by Loganair on Britten-Norman Islanders — three of which appear on this top-10 list.