It’s so short that the seatbelt sign never comes off.
It’s QF2469 from Mt Isa to Cloncurry, and it’s the shortest flight on the Qantas network.
From wheels up to wheels down, the aircraft – usually a Bombardier Dash-8 – spends just 16 minutes in the air.
There’s no time for coffee or meals. In fact, it never really levels out.
It takes off, hits 7000 feet (about a sixth of the top cruising height of a 787-9 Dreamliner), and then immediately begins its descent into Cloncurry.
It’s the Dreamliner that takes us on our longest flight – the record-breaking non-stop route between Perth and London.
When we first flew this service 12 months ago, it finally connected the last two populated continents on earth not united by a direct commercial flight.
It takes roughly 17 hours to get to London and 16 hours to get back.
But our record is 15 hours and 15 minutes – or the equivalent of about 60 flights between Mt Isa and Cloncurry.
We’ve flown about 10 million kilometres on the Perth-London route so far, carrying 155,000 passengers and earning the highest customer satisfaction rating on our network.
It turns out people love both the comfort of the Dreamliner and the convenience of a direct flight.
That’s especially the case for whoever has been sitting in seat 56F, which has racked up more hours of in-flight entertainment viewing than any other seat on the Dreamliner this year.
Chances are its occupant binged a few seasons’ worth of Ballers, Billions and Modern Family – our most watched TV shows on the route.
And they may have paired that with our most popular meal: Guinness beef pie with potato mash.
The two flights may be polar opposites in a lot of ways, but QF2469 across the Queensland outback and QF9 from Australia to Europe have one thing in common: a flying kangaroo on the tail.
Whether it’s a short morning hop or a double-sunrise day, we hope to see you on board soon.