SG/Ken Amer/Orkney Photographic The journey between the Orkney islands is 1.7 miles and has been done in 69 seconds

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His time made it into the Guinness Book Of Records and from that day to this the route has been recognised as the world’s shortest scheduled flight. Alsop later trimmed 11 seconds off his time and while Stuart Linklater – who flew the route 12,000 times between 1989 and 2013 – got it down to 52 seconds, in the absence of an official scrutineer his record remains an informal one. Next month Loganair, the airline that flies this short hop in a twin-engined Britten-Norman Islander for £36 return, will celebrate the route’s 50th anniversary and so I flew up to Orkney to sample the joys of extremely short-haul travel.

During the school term you are likely to be sharing the plane with teachers – a number of whom commute to Westray from Kirkwall, Orkney’s largest town – but during the summer many of the passengers are tourists keen to cross the world’s shortest flight off their bucket list.

My parents are visiting so we decided to do the shortest flight Julio - Passenger

On the day I board Loganair flight LOG323, with photographer Ken Amer in tow, our companions include Glasgow University student Julio Rodriguez, 28, and his partner Ester Checa, also 28, who works as a civil engineer with the local council in Kirkwall. “My parents are visiting so we decided to do the shortest flight,” says Julio. “I like planes.” “And flight simulators,” interjects Ester.

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Other travellers may well be history enthusiasts. Locals say that if you stick a spade in the ground on Orkney you’ll find an archaeological site. And Westray and Papa Westray are no exception. In 2009, the only neolithic carving ever to have been found in Scotland was discovered on Westray. Christened the Orkney Venus by the international media, the 4,500-year-old 41mm tall sandstone carving of a woman is known more prosaically as the “Westray wife” by the islanders. On Papa Westray, meanwhile, the Knap of Howar is the oldest preserved house in northern Europe, dating back to 3,500BC. When Loganair identified its one millionth passenger on the route last October, it turned out to be Anna Randall, an RBS “flying banker” who had taken more than 10,000 trips on the service as she visited island communities to tend to their banking requirements. Our pilot is 30-year-old Gary Scott. In his yellow hi-vis jacket, Gary may not display the epaulettes and sleeve stripes of an international commercial pilot but there’s no doubt he’s the real deal. Before joining Loganair in 2015, he spent four years with Susi Air, an airline flying out of West Java to some of Indonesia’s most remote islands, which was the subject of the Channel 4 series Worst Place To Be A Pilot.

Orkney Photographic View of Westray in the forground and Papa Westray in the background

One of Susi’s captains said that flying to some of the most remote and dangerous locations on earth was “95 per cent boredom and five per cent pure terror” and US embassy staff were banned from flying Susi following a series of fatal crashes in 2011-12. The flight to Papa Westray promises to be a rather more sedate affair, however. Weather conditions are good and the natives are said to be much more friendly than the sometimes warring tribes that Gary and his colleagues encountered on jungle airstrips. Once aboard, it’s clear that there will be no G&Ts served by trolley dollies. Behind the pilot there are eight seats, two abreast, and it’s a snug fit for the slimmest of passengers. Nor is there any of the “Doors to manual” nonsense. The safety briefing consists of Gary turning round to ask, “Everyone got seat-belts on?”, before notifying us that the safety instruction cards are in the seat-back pockets. With that he pushes forward the throttle and we’re off. The timing of the trip is done from “wheels off the ground to wheels down” and I start my stopwatch as we clear the runway and head across the narrow strait that separates Westray from its neighbour to the northeast.

Orkney Photographic A full complement of eight passengers cram into the aircraft

As the plane’s flaps remain down the entire way, the plane doesn’t exceed a matronly top speed of 110 knots but within 55 seconds we are over dry land once more. Given its name, you could be forgiven for thinking that Papa Westray is the daddy of the two but it is in fact much smaller, just four square miles compared to Westray’s 18. The name Papa comes from the monastery it once housed. These days the monks are long gone and its population of around 75 now mostly consists of fishermen and farmers – there are more cattle than people on Orkney. Gary veers left towards the island’s short, compacted gravel runway. When the service first got under way in 1967 the runways were grass and a herd of cows performed the task normally carried out by a lawnmower. “The cattle were taken off before we landed but unfortunately they didn’t take off the cow pats,” recalls Stuart Linklater, now 64, “so when the nose-wheel hit the cow pats it spread it all over the plane. Then people would get out and the seatbelt would fall down the side of the aeroplane and you’d get cow dung over everything.” With a little wobble, Gary brings the Islander to earth in 82secs, some way off the record and 12 seconds longer than Gary’s personal best but well within the two minutes on the schedule.

GETTY Pierowall is the main village of Westray in the Orkney Islands