Aviation milestones: The Long and Short of It
At PrivateFly, we love looking at the extremities of flying, whether that’s landing at some of the world’s most stunning airports, or looking at the highs and lows of private jets.
So we really enjoyed seeing two recent milestones in the same month that demonstrated both the long and short of aviation achievements.
THE WORLD’S SHORTEST ISLAND HOP
The world’s shortest commercial flight is the quick hop between two islands in Scotland, and has just celebrated taking its millionth passenger on the route on 31 October 2016.
The Loganair flight, in a Britten Norman Islander aircraft, is scheduled to take two minutes, but can be as little as 47 seconds if the winds are in your favour. With a distance of just 2.7 km (1.5 nautical miles), the daily route goes between the islands of Westray and Papa Westray in the Orkney Islands, off the northeast coast of Scotland. The route shows how aviation is an essential lifeline in remote locations, with regular passengers on the short hop including teachers, medical staff, and school children.
THE LONGEST NON-STOP FLIGHT ROUTE
At the other end of aviation spectrum, the world’s longest flight has just broken records with Air India’s B-777 flying 15,300 kilometres (8,261 nm) on its Delhi to San Francisco route.
By changing the direction of the route from an Atlantic crossing to a Pacific crossing, the airline has added 1400 km to the flight and broken the distance record. The flight took place on 16 October 2016 and the airline has continued this eastern routing since. What’s interesting is that this also reduces the flight time (and fuel burn) by two hours. By taking advantage of the Jet Stream tailwinds, the Boeing 777 can fly from Delhi to San Francisco in just 14.5 hours (read more about how Jet Streams affect flight time). This distance record beats the previous longest flight of Auckland to Dubai, flown by Emirates (14,200 km or 7,667 nm ).
PRIVATE JET RECORD-BREAKERS
Private jets also claim some impressive aviation records. The distance record is held by Gulfstream’s flagship G650ER, which achieves 13,890 km non stop (7,500 nm). The fastest civilian aircraft in the world is a private jet, currently held by the Cessna Citation X+ , flying at a speed of Mach 0.935, just off the speed of sound.
PrivateFly also holds some impressive speed records of our own. In our recent quarterly private jet trends report, we saw one customer go from enquiry to airborne in just 54 minutes and 12 seconds.
Whether it’s short and sweet or flying faster and further, PrivateFly arranges private flights all over the world. For a quote or flight advice, contact us or call our team of aviation experts on +44 (0) 1747 642 777.
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