Qatar Airways flies 24-mile cargo route that takes just nine minutes

Another flight is scheduled for this Sunday

Is this the shortest scheduled flight in the world? (Flight Radar 24)

Qatar Airways has operated a scheduled flight between two cities that takes just nine minutes.

The Doha-based airline has flown a cargo flight between Maastricht in the Netherlands and Liège, Belgium, which are just 24 miles apart.

On 3 November, a Boeing 777 took off from Maastricht for Liège, according to tracking data from Flight Radar. The flight took under 10 minutes. The aircraft then flew on to Mexico City.

Typically, flight QR8173 would fly from Doha to Liège and onto Mexico, but a client in Maastricht wanted cargo dropped off there instead, reports One Mile At A Time.

A Qatar Airways spokesperson confirmed to The Independent: “The runway in Maastricht is not long enough to allow the plane to fly to Mexico immediately afterwards.

“Therefore, the aircraft must be repositioned in Liège, where there is a runway for long-haul flights and the plane can take off with a full load of goods and a full tank of fuel.”

There is another flight scheduled for Sunday 10 November, according to the flight data platform.

Qatar Airways has started to operate a nine-minute cargo flight (Flight Radar 24)

It’s not the first super-short scheduled flight.

In March, British Airways launched a flight from Bahrain to Damman in Saudi Arabia, which is just 54 miles long.

In May, Emirates launched the world’s shortest Airbus A380 flight, from Dubai to Muscat in Oman. The distance between the two cities is just 211 miles.