shortest --
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">I seem to recall it was once possible to take an airliner from Oakland, California to San Francisco. That would be about 11 miles.</font>
11.3 miles to be exact.
Seehttp://www.webflyer.com/ (MileMarker)
When I worked for UA SFORR in 1985-87, there was always an early morning eastbound flight from OAK which had overnighted at the SFO operations base, and an incoming westbound flight to OAK arriving just before 1800 that continued on to SFO. Does UA still do that?
Regardless, NW Airlink (Pacific Island Aviation) has UA beat by half a mile at
10.8 miles:
SPN-TIQ
My family and I flew over a dozen flights to Tinian at the end of 2001 for the NW 2500-mile online booking bonus on the Shorts 360. (Separate PNRs, of course.) Unfortunately, post-9/11 frequency dropped to weekend-only through year-end. The actual distance between the closest parts of the islands is only three miles. The World War II invasion of Tinian was the only amphibious assault to include land-based artillery.
Westray and Papa Westray do not show up on the FlyerTalk Airport Code Lookup.
While hypertechnically one could pay an Alaskan air taxi bush pilot to ferry you across a lake and it would be "commercial," I think given the forum we should limit ourselves to landing sites with airport codes and carriers with airline codes. Perhaps even a regular schedule?
Remember when PA had the helicopter from the top of a building in Manhattan to JFK, for First Class transatlantic connections? What was the "airport" code? That was the shortest flight in UA's computer reservation system while I worked in the industry.
And consistent with this forum, PA gave miles for the flight!