What's Your Shortest Flight?

[Nels_Anderson]

I've been exploring the British isles and have worked my way up to the Orkneys, where I've just completed what may be the shortest possible flight between two actual airports. I'd heard about this before somewhere, Westray and Papa Westray, each with a small airport and only about a mile apart.

 

Have just completed the flight in the Piper PA28-181 Archer, the log shows my flight time was 4:35. Anyone have anything shorter than this?

 

Here I am on the ramp, with the arrow pointing to my starting point:

 

 

Here are my log entry and route of flight:

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

Great flight Nels. And a fun idea for all of us to search the charts. It also allowed me to sim relive a moment of my youth.

US Naval Aviation (USN, USMC, USCG) does their initial flight training at NAS Whiting Filed in Sant Rosa FL. Whiting is actually two separate airfields that are situated side by side. North Field is for FW training and South Field is for RW. On a foggy morning in 1978 a solo student got confused and landed a T-28C on Rwy 5 at Sth field when cleared to land on Rwy 5 at Nth field. The taxi/tow road between the fields was being renovated and unavailable for aircraft movement. On the following day I was on the flight schedule for what would be the shortest solo flight of my student years. I departed Rwy 5 at Sth field, made a tight left turn and was immediately cleared to land on Rwy 22 at Nth field. To this day looking at a 0.1 hour flight in my logbook makes me smile.

[daspinall]

RW flight....  Wick to Kirkwall on a Vickers Viscount in less than 3 mins..... I was en route to Sumburgh from Manchester stopping at  Aberdeen Wick  Kirkwall then Sumburgh back in the mid 70s normally we flew Manchester Aberdeen Sumburgh, but not that day....

[PhrogPhlyer]

1 hour ago, daspinall said:

but not that day....

I sense a story in here somewhere...

[davidc2]

Just tried this flight out myself, did it in two minutes  

 

Was a lot of fun as well

[Nels_Anderson]

13 hours ago, PhrogPhlyer said:

Great flight Nels. And a fun idea for all of us to search the charts. It also allowed me to sim relive a moment of my youth.

 

OK, that's a good one! It's really all one field (one control tower, right?) so no quite a flight between two individual airports but a pretty unique situation.

[Nels_Anderson]

3 hours ago, daspinall said:

RW flight....  Wick to Kirkwall on a Vickers Viscount in less than 3 mins..... I was en route to Sumburgh from Manchester stopping at  Aberdeen Wick  Kirkwall then Sumburgh back in the mid 70s normally we flew Manchester Aberdeen Sumburgh, but not that day....

 

I've landing at both Wick and Kirkwall as part of this trip. I just went to Google Maps to measure the distance...36 miles. You were really moving to do that in 3 minutes!

[Nels_Anderson]

1 hour ago, davidc2 said:

Just tried this flight out myself, did it in two minutes  

 

Was a lot of fun as well

 

I was thinking about this...Being a proper pilot and dealing with a wind from 270 degrees, I departed westbound (pretty much the route shown in my picture), turned back and then did a full left pattern before landing. On the return trip if I skipped the traffic pattern I could take off south and immediately turn west and land so two minutes sounds about right.

[daspinall]

I remember the pilot saying it was the shortest scheduled flight in the UK at that time.... memories play tricks with age Nels... I'm rusty sure it was less than 5 mins... we climbed out and then started the descent.... may he meant two mins of flight time excluding the climb and decent...

[PhrogPhlyer]

23 minutes ago, Nels_Anderson said:

one control tower, right?

Yes, if my memory serves me correctly I was received this call from the tower... "You are cleared to take off runway 5 south field and cleared to land runway 22 north field."  Not even two separate calls. 

[davidc2]

28 minutes ago, Nels_Anderson said:

. On the return trip if I skipped the traffic pattern I could take off south and immediately turn west and land so two minutes sounds about right.

 

That's how I flew it.  I just put a waypoint in the middle of the water, took off, flew to it, hit the waypoint and was lined up with runway 3  

[Nels_Anderson]

I managed to lower my flight time on the return trip

 

[tiger1962]

This flight is even more fun in the plane that actually flies it - the BN-2 Islander by Blackbox Simulations!

If you fancy a challenge, here's a great article on the other shortest scheduled flights in the world: https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-worlds-shortest-scheduled-flights-4101228#:~:text=The World's Shortest Scheduled Flights 1 Karpathos to,6 Kinshasa%2C DRC to Brazzaville%2C Congo (17 minutes)

[cianpars]

I often do a short flight from EGTG Filton (now has houses built on it but Overripepuma has brought it back to how it was before) to EGGD Bristol (UK2000) when I'm testing.

 

Also a quick flight across the Bristol Channel to Superspud's nice rendition of Cardiff (EGFF).

 

EGLC London City to EGLL is a good one for testing performance in high density scenery as is Laguardia to JFK.

 

All of the above are pretty short flights I often find myself doing in between the longer ones.

[davidc2]

34 minutes ago, cianpars said:

EGLC London City to EGLL is a good one for testing performance in high density scenery as is Laguardia to JFK.

 

 

I have the London City one saved and is a regular for me   Love the Eye!

[daspinall]

I use to love doing a short flight in FS2004 from Vancouver harbour, in the Beaver through the mountains via Iron bay to Squamish CYSE.. It's a nice short run... if you like to fly low the weather can be very challenging, which imo adds value to the flight... 

[Hyperdark]

Abergavenny to Kemys Commander, in fact there are plenty of farm strips close to each other in the UK , enough that you could hop your way around the countryside like a demented frog

[davidc2]

Just flew EGYE to EGYD, 3:34 flight time.  Was a rainy day though

 

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

5 hours ago, Hyperdark said:

demented frog

Laughing.

[PhrogPhlyer]

37 minutes ago, davidc2 said:

EGYE to EGYD

Loving this thread, sharing all these is giving me new places to visit that I mat have even thought of trying.

[Nels_Anderson]

5 hours ago, Hyperdark said:

Abergavenny to Kemys Commander, in fact there are plenty of farm strips close to each other in the UK , enough that you could hop your way around the countryside like a demented frog

 

Developer "Neil's Tours" has made a speciality of creating these English farm strips. Between the freeware and payware releases he's done there must be hundreds of them...

 

https://store.flightsim.com/vendor/neils-tours/?orderby=date

[Hyperdark]

2 hours ago, Nels_Anderson said:

 

Developer "Neil's Tours" has made a speciality of creating these English farm strips. Between the freeware and payware releases he's done there must be hundreds of them...

 

https://store.flightsim.com/vendor/neils-tours/?orderby=date

Yea I have that and it fills in some gaps in stock MSFS, but tbh there are better freeware versions of some of the places. Abergavenny for instance has a freeware version that is far more accurate on flightsim.to

[danl]

There are claims that the  two closest runways in the world with separate airports are:

 

Gibraltar International Airport (GIB) and La Línea Airport (LEI) in Spain - The distance between the runways of these two airports is only 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) apart. Gibraltar International Airport's runway intersects the main road that connects Gibraltar to Spain, causing the road to close every time a plane takes off or lands.

 

Vancouver International Airport (YVR) and Abbotsford International Airport (YXX) in Canada - The distance between the runways of these two airports is approximately 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) apart. Despite the close proximity of the runways, there are no known incidents of airplanes crossing paths or interfering with each other's operations.

 

[Nels_Anderson]

Hey Dan...I'm trying to find the airports around Gibraltar. "La Linea" is indeed the region of Spain directly next to Gibraltar, but I cannot find an airport there. Airport code "LEI" seems to refer to Almeria Airport in Spain but that's 172 miles east of Gibraltar. Can you give the coordinates for La Linea Airport?

 

I also looked up YVR and YXX, as two international airports that close would be remarkable! But the airports I found with Google maps are 39 miles apart so I must not have found the ones you were referring to.

 

 

[Hyperdark]

On 3/12/2023 at 10:29 AM, danl said:

There are claims that the  two closest runways in the world with separate airports are:

 

Gibraltar International Airport (GIB) and La Línea Airport (LEI) in Spain - The distance between the runways of these two airports is only 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) apart. Gibraltar International Airport's runway intersects the main road that connects Gibraltar to Spain, causing the road to close every time a plane takes off or lands.

 

Vancouver International Airport (YVR) and Abbotsford International Airport (YXX) in Canada - The distance between the runways of these two airports is approximately 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) apart. Despite the close proximity of the runways, there are no known incidents of airplanes crossing paths or interfering with each other's operations.

 

I suppose it depends how you define runways, but if you include Grass strips, then Westonzoyland and Middle Zoy must be hard to beat  Ive been into Westonzoyland many times irl and its weird being in the circuit and looking down at a different airfield. (they are about 1/2 a kilometre apart)