Here’s something of absolutely no consequence that I’m nonetheless quite intrigued by. I know a lot of OMAAT readers are airline and plane nerds, so here’s a question — what are the shortest regularly scheduled transatlantic and transpacific passenger flights? The answer might not be quite as straightforward or uncontested as it initially sounds.
Continue reading: What Are The Shortest Transatlantic & Transpacific Flights?
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
The meal service on that St. Johns-Dublin flight must be the FA's sprinting down the aisle throwing pretzels at everyone then slamming the lights off for your max 3 hours of sleep, lol
So what exactly are Hawaii flights considered then, if not transpacific?
You seem to make a lot of concessions and scenarios for what qualifies as TATL, but seemingly do a very shallow analysis for TPAC.
Well, it’s the same as JFK-DEN not being a transcon in the US. Hawaii is smack in the middle.
It might just be easier to treat it like a longer domestic flight and give up on getting sleep
You should do a shortest flights (period) article, both within the US and outside of it! Stuff like ACT-DFW in the US... but also the one-minute Loganair flight
dont forget that in the early 1990s Alaska Airlines flew from Anchorage to several Russian Far East destinations- Magadan, Petropavlosk Kamchatsky, several others. All on the MD-80.
No one is making the case that JFK-DEN is transcon. Very weird strawman to make. You may as well call ATL to CLT transcon.
This article has plenty of airports in the middle of the Atlantic as a part of the analysis like KEF, Hawaii should be no different.
So I've driven between Waco and the DFW area multiple times and it's really not a rough drive at all, giving me the assumption that it would be a cheaper bus trip... but sadly for Waco here are the options to get to DFW:
1. Make the drive and pay for parking
2. Take a bus. I found a couple examples
2a) Companies including Waco Streak, Airport Transportation of Waco are charging over $150 (aka over one dollar per mile)
2b) Companies including Greyhound, Flixbus are charging ~$25 or so, but you have to transfer separately to DFW. Possible with a single transit line
3. Take Amtrak, that doesn't service Waco but instead services a town ~25 minutes away called McGregor, then transfer separately from the Dallas train station to DFW. Possible with a single transit line
4. Take a really, really short flight to DFW and connect
You gotta feel for the people of Waco, which is not a small number of people
Your Iceland to "North America" examples don't work, since KEF is located on the North American tectonic plate. If anything, you could switch it around to Europe and get a much shorter example lol.
For argument’s sake, Hawai’i is probably much farther to a large landmass than KEF, Azores, etc.
Icelandair also runs Keflavik to Kulusuk (KEF-KUS) during the summer which is shorter than the route to Nuuk.
Are there no flights between Alaska and Japan?
Interestingly, I believe there also used to be charter flights between Uelen (Chukotia, Russia) and None (Alaska) which certainly would be much shorter, although subject to the same objections as the Greenland flights.
KEF is actually extremely close to the border between tectonic plates (as it matters you can see the gap, a few miles from the airport).
I'm not sure on which tectonic plate it is, but assuming you're right then any domestic flight would be the shortest. But it'd rather be a transcontinental flight rather than transatlantic!
ANC is mostly a fuel stop.
However, decades ago, flights from Tokyo, Seoul, or Taipei (can’t remember which one) eastward flights did allow to discharge passengers at ANC. That’s way way long time ago.
If you throw cargo into the consideration, then there are dozens of daily "short" ANC-Asia flights that are probably among the nominees for shortest.
The accepted border of the North Sea is east of the Orkney Islands so the Loganair flight you mention is indeed 'Transatlantic'!
That's not a strawman. That's an analogy. He was trying to demonstrate a point
Technically, you could consider intra-Hawaii service as the shortest transpacific route. I think OGG-KOA would win, ignoring
Politically, of course, in the same sense as French overseas departments are European. Geographically, I think many people say it's part of NA.
It also has more in common culturally with North America. yes it's run by Denmark but the local population and language are very similar to Inuits from Canada, Alaska etc
And yet AA now has an even shorter international route between Miami and the Bahamas. Maybe that counts as "crossing the Atlantic" 😀
The 'North America' definition is strange, as the FOR example shows. Incidentally, there are still some services running between CCS and Tenerife but the shape of the planet means that the distance is about double that of SID-FOR!
Nuuk feels 100% culturally European, regardless of where it falls geographically.
I just don't think anybody would argue Hawaii is in Asia. Iceland and the Azores are culturally, and arguably geographically in Europe. You haven't even crossed half of the Pacific ocean when you make it to Hawaii.
Guam, however, starts to look like the examples on the periphery of Europe.
While there is no "right" definition for TATL, continental North America to continental Europe is an obvious candidate.
LIS-BOS is 3190.
Is there anything shorter?
Flying is not always the shortest way to go. But for a flight like this makes the most sense. If you're UA Emerald you're flying that flight for Free with your pts
Wrong. All carriers flying transatlantic include complimentary meal service. This is universal.
I trust the website I looked this up on rather than you. You referred to "UA Emerald" in an earlier post. Anyone who doesn't know the difference between Star Alliance and oneworld on an aviation website isn't to be trusted with any information.
If I may distress to baseball, sportswriters routinely refer to road trips for east coast teams that include both the Colorado Rockies and any number of California teams as a “West Coast swing.”
The shortest Transatlantic route must be Norlandairs AEY-CNP Akureyri-Constable Point route at only 371 miles
Just want to throw out another option for the folks of Waco: We will often rent a car where we live and drop it at the Orlando airport when we fly from there, then rent a car when we get back to get back home. It makes sense financially when we travel for 2+ weeks and don't want to pay the high parking fees.
I thought that AC flew a regularly scheduled flight between St johns and London?
This was an enjoyable post.
I think you could start with definitions of the continents from legal, geographical, etc. sources and then say, "Based on this definitions, here are the shortest flights."
I do believe that Alaska once had a sked flt between Anchorage and Vladivostok.
Before COVID, Japan Airlines operated limited number of seasonal flights between Tokyo and Fairbanks in winter for Aurora observation tour.
It would be interesting to see similar information but from US hubs and how they compare to best route your trip.