The shortest ticketed flight lasts 47 seconds

Between the Scottish islands of Westray and Papa Westray, in the Orkney archipelago, lie 2.7 kilometres of open sea. Loganair has been crossing them since 1967 on a genuine scheduled service: published timetable, numbered ticket, boarding pass. The timetable allows two minutes; the record, with a tailwind, is 47 seconds wheels to wheels.

The aircraft is a Britten-Norman Islander, an eight-seat plane with no separate cockpit: the passenger up front sits beside the pilot and sees the sea through the same windscreen. There is no cabin crew, no trolley, and no time to stow your tray table because there is no tray table.

The route was not invented as a curiosity. Papa Westray has around ninety inhabitants and its ferry link depends on the tide, so the little plane works as a road: mail, the doctor, the big shop, and anyone catching a connection at Kirkwall. People who use it daily do not count it in seconds but in whether the weather lets them fly at all.

Guinness lists it as the shortest scheduled flight in the world, and Orkney Islands Council subsidises it as a lifeline service: on the timetable it occupies a two-minute slot, on weekdays, among the other island flights.