The Shortest Flight in the World Is 2.8 Kilometres

The shortest scheduled commercial flight in the world runs between two islands in Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland: Westray to Papa Westray, 2.8 km from runway to runway. The timetable allows two minutes. With a following wind it has been flown in 53 seconds.

That answer is well known. The rest of the list is where most guides go wrong. The most widely shared top 10 still includes two routes that no longer fly and names the wrong airline on two others, and many lists quietly drop domestic flights altogether. So we rebuilt it from scratch. Every route below was checked against the airline that flies it in September 2026, domestic and international alike, and every distance is measured airport to airport from the same database the My Flight Routes map uses.

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All ten are domestic flights: not one of them crosses an international border. If you are after flights that change countries, we covered those separately in the world's shortest international flights, where the record is 24 km, between Brazzaville and Kinshasa.

1. Westray to Papa Westray: 2.8 km

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Loganair has flown between these two northern Orkney islands since 1967, and it is still a real scheduled service with a flight number, a fare and a timetable, not a sightseeing stunt. The aircraft is a Britten-Norman Islander, a twin-engine workhorse built for short grass and gravel strips, carrying up to seven passengers and the pilot, who sits close enough to shake hands with.

The whole trip is shorter than the main runway at London Heathrow. On most days the scheduled time is two minutes, and the aircraft is in the air for about ninety seconds. The record belongs to Stuart Linklater, who did it in 53 seconds and retired in 2013 after roughly 12,000 flights on the inter-island network over 24 years.

Why fly at all when you can almost see across? Because the water between the islands is the North Atlantic in the most exposed corner of the British Isles, and a boat is slower, less frequent and far more at the mercy of the weather. Orkney Islands Council subsidises the service as a public service obligation, and Loganair's current contract runs to March 2029. For the 90 or so people who live on Papa Westray, home to the Knap of Howar, one of the oldest standing houses in northern Europe, the plane is the quickest link to Kirkwall and the rest of Orkney.

Orkney's Other Two: Stronsay to Sanday and North Ronaldsay to Sanday

Westray is not Orkney's only entry. Loganair's inter-isles network links Kirkwall with six of the outer islands, and because the aircraft works its way round them in loops rather than flying out and back, several legs are absurdly short. Two more of them make the world top 10.

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Stronsay to Sanday (number 3, 11.2 km) is a leg of the weekday morning loop: in the published timetable, the Islander leaves Stronsay at 08:46 and lands on Sanday at 08:51. North Ronaldsay to Sanday (number 5, 15.3 km) is rarer: it runs on Sundays, when North Ronaldsay and Sanday share a single flight. That makes it the hardest route on this list to catch, and the most satisfying one to log.

That puts three of the world's five shortest flights inside one Scottish county. The same airline also lands on the beach at Barra, which we covered in the world's weirdest flights. Scotland's islands are to short flights what the Gulf is to long ones.

2. Harle to Wangerooge: 10.5 km

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The shortest scheduled flight in Germany crosses the Wadden Sea from the little airfield at Harlesiel to Wangerooge, the easternmost of the East Frisian Islands. FLN Frisia Luftverkehr, which markets itself as Die Inselflieger, the island flyers, flies it year round in about five minutes, with Islanders and newer Tecnam P2012s.

Harle has no three-letter IATA code, only the ICAO code EDXP, and that is probably why most English-language lists miss it. The reason the route exists is the tide. Wangerooge is car-free, and the ferry can only run when there is enough water in the channel, so its departure time shifts every day. The plane does not care.

Until recently Germany had an even shorter route: Norddeich to Juist, 10.3 km, flown by the same company. It ended on 1 March 2025, after passenger numbers fell from about 54,000 in 2018 to 26,000 in its final year, because fast ferries had made the boat competitive. Any list that still ranks it was written before then.

4. Molokai to Kalaupapa: 14.2 km

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This is the one route on the list that exists because of the land, not the sea. Kalaupapa is a flat peninsula at the foot of some of the highest sea cliffs in the world, on the north shore of Molokai, and no road connects it to the rest of the island. Mokulele Airlines flies Cessna Grand Caravans down to it from Molokai's main airport.

It is also a place that deserves to be written about with care. From 1866, the Kingdom of Hawaii, and later the territory and state, forcibly isolated people with Hansen's disease (leprosy) at Kalaupapa. The priest who cared for them, Saint Damien of Molokai, and Saint Marianne Cope, who continued his work, both worked there. Today it is Kalaupapa National Historical Park, home to a small community of residents and park staff, and it is closed to outside visitors. The flight is a lifeline for residents and park staff, not a route you can book for the view.

6. Saipan to Tinian: 17.8 km

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Star Marianas Air flies between Saipan and its southern neighbour Tinian in less than ten minutes, in a six-seat, single-engine Piper Cherokee Six. It is the kind of aircraft where one of the passengers usually ends up in the right-hand seat next to the pilot.

Tinian is small and quiet today, but in 1945 its North Field was one of the busiest airfields in the world: it is where the B-29s that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off in August 1945.

7. Tahiti to Moorea: 17.9 km

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Search flights Papeete → MooreaSearch flights PPT → MOZ

This one is a surprise: the aircraft is a full-size, 70-seat ATR 72, and the flight between Tahiti's international airport and Moorea is over almost as soon as the seatbelt sign goes off, about seven minutes in the air. Most visitors take the ferry, which takes around half an hour, so the flight mainly exists as the first leg of a trip deeper into the islands, and as the most spectacular approach in French Polynesia: straight at Moorea's jagged volcanic peaks.

8. St Kitts to Nevis: 18.0 km

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Search flights St Kitts → NevisSearch flights SKB → NEV

St Kitts and Nevis is one country split across two islands, separated by a channel called the Narrows, about three kilometres wide. The airport-to-airport distance is longer because Robert L. Bradshaw airport, next to the capital Basseterre, sits well up the island from the strait. Cape Air and FlexFlight both fly it; if your list still says Air Sunshine, it is out of date. Cape Air has been bringing its new Tecnam P2012s to the Caribbean since May 2025.

Nevis is where Alexander Hamilton was born, in Charlestown, a few kilometres from where you land.

9. Connemara to Inis Mór: 18.5 km

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Aer Arann Islands flies Britten-Norman Islanders from Connemara Regional Airport at Inverin, about 27 km west of Galway, to all three Aran Islands, year round and weather permitting. The hop to Inis Mór, the largest, takes about eight minutes. It is one of the few routes on this list that is genuinely popular with tourists, because the ferry from Rossaveal is slower and the Atlantic here can be rough, and because the view of the islands' stone-walled fields from a few hundred metres up is half the point.

10. Karpathos to Kasos: 21.4 km

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The shortest scheduled flight in Greece connects Karpathos with its small neighbour Kasos, a few minutes in an Olympic Air Dash 8-100. The ferry covers the same water in over an hour, longer in the strong winds this part of the Aegean is known for.

You will see this route quoted at 16 or 19 km. Those figures measure between the islands; the two runways are 21.4 km apart, because Karpathos airport sits at the far southern tip of its island. It is a useful reminder that "distance" means different things in different lists, and why we measured every route here the same way.

Two Routes That Are Gone

If you find a list that includes either of these, it is out of date:

• Norddeich to Juist, Germany (10.3 km). Ended 1 March 2025, replaced by fast ferries. It would have been number 2.
• Minami-Daito to Kita-Daito, Japan (12.7 km). Two remote islands 360 km east of Okinawa, linked by Ryukyu Air Commuter until 31 July 2024. It would have been number 4.

Why Flights This Short Exist

Put the ten side by side and none of them is about distance. They are about what is in the way.

• Water beats kilometres. Nine of the ten cross the sea, and the sea sets the terms: tides at Wangerooge, Atlantic swell in Orkney and the Aran Islands, Aegean wind at Kasos. The flight is not faster because it is short, it is useful because the boat is slow, infrequent or cancelled.
• Somebody pays for it. Orkney's inter-island flights are a council contract. Routes this short rarely make money on fares alone, and the ones that survive are the ones a government or a community has decided it cannot do without. The two that died, Juist and Kita-Daito, lost exactly that argument.
• The aircraft is small and tough. Islanders, Caravans, Cherokees and Tecnams: aircraft that can land on a short strip, turn round in minutes and fly the same leg a dozen times a day. The ATR on Tahiti to Moorea is the exception that proves the rule.
• Land can be the obstacle too. Kalaupapa is on the same island as its departure airport. The flight exists because the only other way down is a cliff.

For the jet version of the same idea, Alaska Airlines flies a Boeing 737 about 50 km from Wrangell to Petersburg on its Milk Run, among the shortest sectors any mainline jet flies. At the other end of the scale, our list of the world's longest flights tops out at more than 15,000 km, over five thousand times the length of the Westray hop.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the shortest commercial flight in the world?
Westray to Papa Westray in the Orkney Islands, Scotland: 2.8 km between the two airports, flown by Loganair. The timetable allows two minutes, and the record is 53 seconds.

What is the shortest domestic flight in the world?
The same one. Westray and Papa Westray are both in Scotland, so the world's shortest flight is also its shortest domestic flight. The shortest international flight is Brazzaville to Kinshasa, 24 km.

What is the shortest flight in Germany?
Harle to Wangerooge, 10.5 km, about five minutes. It became the shortest when Norddeich to Juist ended in March 2025.

Can you book the world's shortest flight as a tourist?
Yes. Westray to Papa Westray is a normal scheduled service, bookable on Loganair's website, and plenty of people fly it just to say they have. Seats are few, so book ahead in summer.

Why do such short flights exist?
Because the alternative is a boat that is slow, infrequent or at the mercy of the weather, or, at Kalaupapa, a sea cliff. Most are subsidised lifeline services for the people who live on the islands.

Sources

Every route was checked against the operating airline or recent reporting in September 2026. Distances are great-circle distances between the airports' reference points, computed from the airport database used by the My Flight Routes map, and may differ slightly from figures published elsewhere.

• Westray and Orkney: Westray to Papa Westray flight; Loganair inter-isles timetable.
• Harle and Juist: Die Inselflieger (FLN); airliners.de on the end of the Juist route.
• Kalaupapa: Kalaupapa National Historical Park; Mokulele Airlines.
• Saipan and Tinian: Star Marianas Air; CNN.
• St Kitts and Nevis: Cape Air.
• Aran Islands: Aer Arann Islands.
• Karpathos and Kasos: To Vima; Greek Reporter.

Ten flights, none longer than a half-marathon. Flown one of them? Add it to your map: they are the hardest routes to spot on a world view, and the most fun to find.