From the Daily
Telegraph:
The
world's 10 shortest flights
A list of the
world's 10 shortest regular commercial flights contains an international
service for the first time, thanks to a 13-mile, eight-minute route between
Switzerland and Germany that launched today.
The flight between Switzerland's St Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and
Germany’s Friedrichshafen Airport entered the ranking at number
nine.
In more excitement
for fans of ludicrously brief forays into the sky, this week the world’s
largest commercial aircraft - the Airbus A380 - was handed a regular outing on its shortest ever flight - a mere 235-mile jaunt between Doha
and Dubai. Emirates, the airline behind the route, regularly uses the behemoth
"superjumbos" on 8,000-mile odysseys, but instead thought it could be
put to good use nipping between the two Middle Eastern cities. The journey
could conceivably be made 40 times before the need to refuel.
But what of the
rest of the world’s tiniest hops?
The competition to
become a member of this club is not as fierce as it is at the other end of the
scale, where airlines battle to out-fly each other to the longest non-stop schlep,
but is nevertheless one of intrigue.
Topping the table
is the wonderfully unconventional two-minute Loganair service between Westray
and Papa Westray in Scotland’s Orkney Islands, which are separated by just 1.7
miles of land and sea. It can be completed in as little as 47 seconds,
depending on the direction of the wind, and welcomed its millionth passenger
this week.
Featuring more
obscure airlines, such as Pacific Wings and Guam’s finest carrier, Freedom Air,
read on to find out about 10 flights that cover a total of just 91.5 miles -
less than the distance between London and Bristol.
What a great
story! What can we work out?
Questions:
- What is the average speed for each journey? (We could do this for the new route and also for the Orkney flight.)
- How far can the A380 fly without needing to refuel?
- What sort of correlation is there between the length of the flight in miles and the length in minutes?
Here is the data
from the image, shown in a spreadsheet:
Distance
|
Duration
|
miles
|
mins
|
||
10
|
Cayman Brac
|
14 miles
|
10 mins
|
14
|
10
|
9
|
Friedrichshafen
|
13 miles
|
20 mins
|
13
|
20
|
8
|
Karpathos
|
12 miles
|
5 mins
|
12
|
5
|
7
|
Papeete
|
11 miles
|
15 mins
|
11
|
15
|
6
|
Saipan
|
10.8 miles
|
10 mins
|
10.8
|
10
|
5
|
Connemara
|
10.4 miles
|
6 mins
|
10.4
|
6
|
4
|
Hoolehua
|
8.8 miles
|
10 mins
|
8.8
|
10
|
3
|
Minami-Daito
|
7 miles
|
15 mins
|
7
|
15
|
2
|
Caye Chapel
|
2.4 miles
|
2 mins
|
2.4
|
2
|
1
|
Westray
|
1.7 miles
|
2 mins
|
1.7
|
2
|
Answers:
13 miles in 8
minutes means 1.625 miles in 1 minute and 97.5 mph.
1.7 miles in 47
seconds means 0.036170213 miles in 1 second and (multiply by 3600)
130mph.
235 x 40 = 9400
miles. But this might not be accurate,
because it will presumably depend on wind-direction and wind-speed, there will
be 40 take-offs and 40 landings rather than just one of each, which might use a
different amount of fuel. Presumably
there are also rules about having to have a certain amount of fuel in reserve
in case of bad-weather diversions, etc.
The pmcc is 0.58,
which shows a weak positive correlation.
We could also draw a scattergraph.
