What was the shortest 747 flight?

Get Simon Calder's Travel email. Is this the shortest-ever Boeing 747 flight? British Airways flew a 25-year-old 747, the iconic aircraft known as the Queen of the Skies, just four miles yesterday. Flight BA9172 was flying from Cardiff to St Athan, the location of an engineering base, for the aircraft to be retired.



The record for the shortest flight ever completed by a Boeing 747 is widely attributed to a British Airways "ferry flight" on November 27, 2019. The aircraft (G-CIVX) traveled from Cardiff Airport (CWL) to St. Athan (DGX) in Wales. The total flight time was less than 9 minutes, and the distance covered was a mere 4 miles (approx. 6.4 km). This flight was not a passenger service but a final journey to move the "Queen of the Skies" to a disassembly and recycling facility at the end of its operational life. For scheduled passenger service, some of the shortest 747 routes in history included the high-demand domestic hops in Japan, such as Tokyo Haneda to Osaka, which often clocked in at under 45 minutes of air time. In 2026, as the 747-400 and 747-8 models become increasingly rare in passenger fleets, these short, high-capacity regional routes are mostly served by more fuel-efficient widebodies like the A350.

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