WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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This is the airport on Papa Westray,
 one of the smallest of the Orkney Islands,

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off the tip of Scotland. 

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It is just a windsock, and a hut,
 and a gravel runway.

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I didn't pick a great day
 to travel to this tiny little island.

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The rain is going to return in just
a few minutes, but it's still been a

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nice little trip out to visit the world's
 oldest still standing house.

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[wind and rain noise]

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It's raining sideways. 

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...and also watch some seabirds. 

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From quite a distance. 

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That's a bird.

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00:00:31.320 --> 00:00:32.960
...that's a bird.

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That is also a bird.

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But leaving here, I'm taking the world's
 shortest commercial flight

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from this airport to the
next island, a mile away.

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Which sounded like a great video. 

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But as I started to write the script,
 I found some problems. 

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It's a commercial flight
 and it's August 2021 as I record this.

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So masks are required,
 which won't look great.

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And the planes in use on this route
are incredibly loud and rattly.

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You wouldn't hear a thing. 

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And I'm not going to be the jackass
 who's vlogging on a tiny little plane

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with other passengers on it, loudly
 talking and bothering people and

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accidentally poking a selfie
 stick in someone's face. 

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I'm just going to swap this GoPro out
for a 360-camera,

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and just record voiceover afterwards.

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But... a video about commercial aviation
 logistics, using voiceover?

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Well, that doesn't sound like me. 

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That sounds like something that the
Wendover Productions channel would do.

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So, Sam?

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- Hey there, Tom!
 - I'm going to leave this up to you.

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I'm going to go catch my flight.

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Spanning a distance of  1.7 miles or 2.7 km
over some 80-or-so seconds,

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the flight Tom's about to take

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might seem an affront to logic, economics,
environmentalism and more.

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But the world's shortest flight has
 a very real purpose for very real people.

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You see, the Orkney Islands are a
sparsely-populated archipelago.

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The vast majority of their 22,000-strong
 population lives on what's known,

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despite its island status,
 as the "mainland",

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leaving only about 4,000
 on the outer islands.

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These outer islanders need ways
 of getting to the mainland, of course,

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but bridges are expensive, 

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especially over some of the longer
 interisland spans in the Orkneys.

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And while ferries do operate
 throughout the archipelago,

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they're slow and lack a direct connection
 to onward travel.

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Therefore, the answer is airplanes.

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Of course, flying is expensive. 

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And in the world of commercial aviation,
 it's typically the case

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that the lower the demand,
 the more expensive it is

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for an airline to operate a route
 on a per passenger basis.

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That's because smaller destinations lack
 the economies of scale afforded

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by operating larger airplanes
 more frequently at larger airports.

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So air service to places with 600 or 90
 residents like Westray and Papa Westray

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is essentially impossible
 on a free market basis.

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The fares would be enormous per passenger,
 meaning people wouldn't choose to fly.

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Meaning there wouldn't be enough
 passengers to fill a plane.

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Therefore, flights to Westray and Papa
 Westray are subsidized through the UK's

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public service obligation scheme,
 meaning only a small portion of Loganir's

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revenue is earned through
 selling the flight's £17 or £18 tickets.

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Still, filling a nine-passenger plane
 to Papa Westray, in particular,

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with its 90-person population would be
 difficult even at rock bottom prices.

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Price elasticity only goes so far.

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Therefore, Loganair uses a network design
 referred to as a "milk run".

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Essentially, it means operating a plane
 like a bus or train.

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In this case, the BN-2 Islander aircraft
leaves Kirkwall, the largest town

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in the Orkneys, with passengers
 destined for Papa Westray and Westray.

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Then it lands in Papa Westray,
 drops off any passengers destined for

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that island and picks up any passengers
 traveling to Westray and Kirkwall.

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Next, it flies those 80 or so
seconds to Westray,

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drops off its passengers and picks up
any final travelers headed for Kirkwall.

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This way, it aggregates the cumulative
 demand of two islands onto one flight,

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allowing for operations to each more regularly
than if they both had dedicated flights.

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Altogether, this means the only people
 that might take the flight exclusively

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between Papa Westray and Westray
 are aviation enthusiasts and tourists

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who make the pilgrimage to fly
 on the world's shortest commercial flight.

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Tom, however, is returning to Kirkwall.

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- Sam, thank you so much. 

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There's a link to Sam's channel,
 Wendover Productions, 

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in the description and on screen.
And sure enough, 

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the plane spent two minutes on the ground
 while one passenger disembarked

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and the pilot filled out some paperwork,
 and then we were off in the air again.