In aviation, the flight length is defined as the distance of a flight. Commercial flights are often categorized into long-, medium- or short-haul by commercial airlines based on flight length, although there is no international standard definition and many airlines use air time or geographic boundaries instead. Route category lengths tend to define short-haul routes as being shorter than, long-haul as being longer than, and medium-haul as being in-between.
Route category definitions
Asia & Australia
Japan Air Lines defines routes to Europe and North America as long-haul and all other flights as short-haul.
Virgin Australia defines domestic flights as within Australia, short-haul as those to South East Asia/Pacific and long-haul as those to Abu Dhabi or Los Angeles.
Air France defines short-haul as domestic, medium-haul as within Europe/North Africa and long haul as the rest of the world.
North America
American Airlines defines short-/medium-haul flights as being less than and long-haul as either being more than or being the New York–Los Angeles and New York–San Francisco routes.
Thomson Airways defines the Boeing 737 as a short and mid-haul airliner while the Boeing 767 and 787 as long haul.
While they are capable of flying further, long-haul widebodies are often used on shorter trips: 40% of A350 routes are shorter than, 50% of A380 flights fall within, 70% of 777-200ER routes are shorter than, 80% of 787-9s routes are shorter than, 70% of 777-200LRs flights are shorter than and 777-300ERs flights are evenly distributed across its range.
Superlative flights
Shortest commercial flight
The Westray to Papa Westray flight in Orkney, operated by Loganair, is the shortest commercial flight in the world over 2.8 km in two minutes scheduled flight time including taxiing.
The absolute distance between two points is the great-circle distance, which is always the shortest geographical route. In the example, the aircraft travelling westward from North America to Japan is following a great-circle route extending northward towards the Arctic region. The apparent curve of the route is a result of distortion when plotted onto a conventional map projection and makes the route appear to be longer than it really is. Stretching a string between North America and Japan on a globe will demonstrate why this really is the shortest route despite appearances. The actual flight length is the length of the track flown across the ground in practice, which is usually longer than the ideal great-circle and is influenced by a number of factors such as the need to avoid bad weather, wind direction and speed, fuel economy, navigational restrictions and other requirements. In the example, easterly flights from Japan to North America are shown taking a longer, more southerly, route than the shorter great-circle; this is to take advantage of the favourable jet stream, a fast, high-altitude tail-wind, that assists the aircraft along its ground track saving more time and fuel than the geographically shortest route.
Air time versus schedule times
Air time is the elapsed time that the aircraft is airborne, regardless of what time-zone the flight began and ended in. Schedule time is the difference between the scheduled local time at the origin and the scheduled local time at the destination and usually differs from the actual time in the air as it is affected by the localtime zones. Local clock time flying westward, or "chasing the sun", is slowed, while local clock time flying eastbound is sped up. However, flights over the International Date Line located at approximately 180o E in the Pacific will subtract 24 hours from the schedule time going eastwards and add 24 hours going westwards. For example, the eastward flight shown in the example from Japan to North America will have a scheduled time of arrival earlier than the departure time, while from North America to Japan the flight will take a whole day longer by local time; the actual flying time in both cases being the same or similar.
