A typical widebody flight in October will cover 2,622 nautical miles (4,856 km). That is in long-haul space, precisely as you’d expect, because of the economics, size, and range of such equipment. But what about really short twin-aisle-operated flights? Cirium and OAG schedule information has been analyzed to find the answers.

The shortest bookable widebody flights

This criterion is because many other non-bookable twin-aisle services exist, including Air France on Brazzaville-Kinshasa and vice versa, with an Airbus A350 covering just 14 nautical miles (26 km) on a Great Circle basis. As this is not bookable in its own right—you have to fly to/from Paris to be on it—it’s unfair to include it. There are many other such links globally.

That brings us back to standalone legs where you can fly them. They are shown below, led by an intra-African service that is discussed later. It is one of three intra-African entries, including Brussels Airlines
‘ brand-new fifth freedom service between Freetown, Sierre Leone, and Conakry, Guinea. The stopover en route to Conakry will switch from Dakar to Freetown, entering the shortest list.

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Photo: Brussels Airlines

The table: how many did you name?

Nautical miles (km)

Route

Airline (aircraft)

Comments about October 2024; only widebody service is mentioned

39 (73)

Zanzibar-Dar es Salaam

Air Tanzania (787-8)

Three times weekly. Only operates in this direction; see later. 30-min block.

54 (100)

Antigua-St Kitts

British Airways (777-200ER)

Twice-weekly. Min 30-min block.

62 (116)

Douala-Malabo

Ethiopian Airlines (787-8, 787-9)

Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday on Douala-Malabo and Wednesday and Saturday on Malabo-Douala. Both routes exist triangularly to/from Addis Ababa. 45-min block.

62 (116)

Freetown-Conakry

Brussels Airlines (A330-300)

Brand-new for the airline, beginning on October 30, replacing its Dakar stop. It’ll operate triangularly three times weekly: Brussels-Freetown-Conakry-Brussels. 40-min block.

73 (135)

Hong Kong-Guangzhou

Cathay Pacific (A330-300)

Daily widebody. Min 1h 5m block.

80 (148)

Doha-Bahrain

Qatar Airways (787-9)

Just one (yes, one) roundtrip on a widebody on October 22. 50-min block.

81 (150)

Shanghai Pudong-Ningbo

Shanghai Airlines (787-9)

Twice-weekly. 1h block.

Air Tanzania’s motley fleet

Air Tanzania is a small East African airline. Like most state-owned carriers, it has a small yet highly complex, expensive, and difficult-to-manage mixed fleet.

According to ch-aviation, it has 16 aircraft: five Dash 8 Q400s, four A220-300s, three 787-8s, two 737 MAX 9s (which arrived in 2023 and 2024), one Dash 8 Q300, and one 767-300 freighter. Not all of them are active.

Its trio of 787s, the third and final example of which arrived in August 2024, have 262 seats: 240 in economy and 22 in business. Depending on the number of passenger bags transported, they can carry up to 20 tons of freight.

The shortest bookable widebody flight

African aviation supremo Sean Mendis described the airline last year as “a criminal enterprise masquerading as an airline. They couldn’t be run any less professionally if they tried.”

Against this backdrop, the very short hop is detailed as follows, with all times local. On September 18, for example, the domestic leg took 12 minutes, during which time the aircraft, 0.2-year-old 5H-TCR, cruised at 4,000 feet.

  • Dar es Salaam to Guangzhou: TC402, 05:15-21:15 (11h block)
  • Guangzhou to Zanzibar: TC403, 00:15-06:15 (11h)
  • Zanzibar to Guangzhou: TC403, 07:00-07:30 (30 minutes)

It is part of a much longer Chinese operation. Last year, Africa had ~630,000 roundtrip passengers to/from Guangzhou, mainly traders, Chinese workers, and Chinese migrants. Dar es Salaam was Africa’s second most trafficked market to/from Guangzhou, and Air Tanzania carried the most passengers.

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