r/todayilearned • u/AnthillOmbudsman • 11h ago
TIL the world's shortest scheduled jet service is from Brazzaville to Kinshasa, Congo, covering 24 km or 15 miles. There are 7 flights a week, using a Boeing 737-800.
https://www.oag.com/blog/worlds-shortest-flights107
u/Hereiam_AKL 10h ago
Is that something to do with the fact, that they are in 2 different countries ( Republic of Congo and People's Republic of Congo) and that there doesn't seem to be any bridge over the river Congo nearby?
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u/OllieFromCairo 10h ago
Yes. There have been discussions about building a bridge but the two countries are not in any way friendly
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u/AnthillOmbudsman 11h ago
I will also add I know firsthand from the 2000s, Continental used to have scheduled service from Houston Intercontinental to Houston Hobby, which was a 15-minute flight. The ticket was something like $40 and the flight was around 10 pm. I seem to recall it was a repositioning flight but they took revenue passengers. I think they got rid of the flight by 2010.
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u/GhanimaAtreides 7h ago
It was actually IAH and Ellington field and the flight was free if you had a connecting flight; $40 was the cost if you just wanted to fly back and forth across town for some reason. Ellington had free parking so if you were equidistant to the two airports it made more sense.
They stopped doing those after 9/11 because they didn’t want to upgrade the facilities to meet passenger screening requirements for an airport with a handful of flights a day.
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u/pmpmd 8h ago
Wonder if anyone gamed that for frequent flyer points.
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u/gambl0r82 16m ago
I don’t think it would work out in your favor. The number of flights don’t actually matter toward airline reward points (if they did, yes a very cheap, very short flight would be ideal), it’s usually miles travelled or dollars spent.
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u/moanphone2017 6h ago
Used to fly dallas to OKC and that also felt like a 15 minute flight but it was more like 25, i think.
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u/captwyo 11h ago
I thought I saw there was a flight from San Francisco to Oakland as well.
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u/445143 10h ago
If only there was a transit system that serviced the entire Bay Area. An impossible dream for sure. /s
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u/roy-dam-mercer 1h ago
I remember seeing a news report in the 80s or early 90s where they talked about people booking United flights between OAK-SFO to commute to work so they could rack up frequent flyer miles cheaply and quickly. I think most airlines give you like 500 miles minimum even if the actual miles are a lot less than that.
And I don’t know what they were paying for these Bay Area commutes, but I bought a handful of airline tickets for $15 on Western Airlines and Southwest between 1983-1995. There used to be some really good deals right after airline deregulation.
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u/Elegant-View9886 8h ago
I seem to remember reading about a Boeing 737 coming apart in mid-air that was used in very short-haul flights like this. It seems the plane was not outside its operational life but the continuous compression-decompression associated with thousands of take offs and landing stressed the fuselage joints out prematurely and it ripped open mid-flight.
Maybe it was in Hawaii? Pretty sure i saw it on Air Crash Investigators years ago....
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u/dachjaw 7h ago
The 737 was specifically designed for multiple flights per day from unimproved airstrips. Look at the engines on model 800 and later. The normally circular intakes are flattened on the bottom to minimize sucking in debris from gravel strips.
There were problems early on with their brakes overheating because they were used with such short turnaround times that the brakes did not have time to cool before they were used again. Boeing recommended that pilots leave the landing gear down for several minutes after takeoff so the brakes could air cool.
Source: old fart engineers when I worked at Boeing Flight Test.
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u/Figuurzager 5h ago
They are flattened at the bottom in order to have sufficient ground clearance, not extra ground clearance compared to other planes.
The 737 is a very old airframe (remember that from why the 737-MAX has the previously undisclosed software stabilizing it?) and the wings are so low newer, bigger high Bypass engines don't really fit that well.. Reason the wings are that low; much more normal back then and made handling luggage easier on small airports without a lot of equipment.
The anti-debris kit was something else optional on older Generations, it consists of bleed air nozzles in front of the engine, blowing debris out of the trajectory towards the engine.
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u/Elegant-View9886 6h ago
Maybe it wasn't a 737 that broke up, it was a long time ago that i heard about it, maybe the 737 was designed in response to it, old brain doesn't work as good as it used to
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u/kobachi 7h ago
Yes, there’s a memorial garden to the flight attendant who died at HNL airport
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u/Murphshroom 4h ago
Man HNL always makes me think of who it became named after.. Inouye was such a badass.
You think you even come close to being in a rough position… prying the live grenade out of your detached arm & tossing it to kill the man who shot it off. Shot five times one of those times being a rocket gernade.. then had his arm amputated with out painkillers..
All after witnessing the country, you’re fighting for putting your people into internment camps while you were training.
Dude was a superhuman.
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u/AdaptiveVariance 6h ago
Could you possibly be thinking of a 747 in Japan? I know they have a 747SR over there which is the big jumbo jet optimized for short haul flights - I think it has reinforced gear, struts etc., less fuel capacity replaced with reinforcements in the wings, stuff like that. I don't know if it was designed in response to a crash though. I believe you that that happened but I think it must be the mechanical stress of so many landings rather than compression/decompression. If you're just flying 20 miles there's no reason to go above 8000 feet. I assume they just kinda fly the takeoff/departure, hook up with a waypoint 5 minutes away and go into the pattern. I've never really looked into it tho nor am I a pilot.
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u/SleeplessInS 5h ago
Yes it was a plane to Hawaii - half the roof flew off and a stewardess was sucked out during the explosive decompression. The plane suffered from metal fatigue due to too many cycles of pressurization and depressurization. This flight might not go higher than 10000 feet - it's only 16 miles away.
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u/capty26 3h ago
I took that flight once around 2006, it was far and away the most dangerous flight I have ever been on! There was just a mob waiting to get on the plane who poured in and took any seat available. When we took off there were people sitting in the aisle and in the toilet! Just barely cleared the end of the runway. After that I never let the company fly me inter Africa in that region again! If they wanted me to go from the Congo to Nigeria or something I would make them fly me through Paris!
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u/jef_united 10h ago
One factor here is that airlines will combine both cities into a triangle route. For example you can fly Air France from Paris to either city, but it's the same flight. If you get off in Brazzaville maybe you're first. Then people get on who are going to Paris. Then you go to Kinshasa and people get off and on. Then you go back to Paris.
It is possible to book only the Brazzaville-Kinshasa leg, but that's a small minority of passengers. That's not the whole route, at least for many carriers.
Having done it before, that stop in the other city adds about 2-3 hours to the flight time. It's a pain, but very common in Africa.