Originally Posted by
Tad's Broiled Steaks
Thanks for your input, everyone!
Now, let's make it a bit more "FT-friendly" and try to ascertain which are the shortest big three alliance inter-continental routes in the world. In that case, would YYT-LHR be the case for North America to Europe?
It depends. All goes back to how you define continent for "inter-continental".
From dictionary.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/continent there are quite a few definitions of continent that would rule out YYT-LHR, as those are flights between two islands.
1. one of the main
landmasses of the globe
3. the mainland,
as distinguished from islands or peninsulas. (*)
4. the Continent, the mainland of
Europe, as distinguished from the British Isles.
5. a
continuous tract or extent, as
of land.
In common practice, people deviate from the strict definitions a bit. So if by your personal definition you declare that YYT is in North America and LHR is in Europe (and that is not an absurd definition, if it happens to be yours) then yes, likely the YYT-LHR route is the shortest North America-Europe by a "big three" alliance carrier. But if you stick to the absolute definitions, then OPO-EWR gets the honor, and it is also by a "big three" carrier.
(*) The part about peninsulas in definition 3 bothers me, as it goes against the continuous tract of definition 5. It would exclude the Arabian Peninsula, Iberian Peninsula, the Korean Peninsula, the Kamchatka Peninsula. That would kill a lot of the short routes mentioned upthread. Let's not go there.