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There are really weird short hop routes like Adana/Mersin Turkey to Northern Cyprus and Bahrain to Dammam (Saudi). The latter trip is 1 hr by CAR. Gulf Air flies wide body aircraft on that route and the plane doesn't even have time to properly take off before it needs to start landing. They hand you your juice box while you enter the plane and you never get to recline the seat or open the tray. Surreal stuff :)

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I've flown from Helsinki to Tampere, under 200 km, long long time ago. The cabin personnel had to push the refreshments trolley uphill and downhill the aisle as there was not much level flight portion. I don't really know why it even existed as a route. National carrier and I assume there was a subsidy involved. Back then there was not much security so there was a lot less overhead. Still, a direct train route and road exists and all, so it was very redundant.

The Bahrain - Dammam flight might have something to do with being a necessary connection HUB for workers. The plane I was in was quite large and packed with workers coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. There's some quite weird routes in the Middle East. One time I took a flight from Bahrain to Istanbul via Omman or Doha can't remember which but going in the wrong direction for Istanbul. I believe the plane had made a stop in Abu Dhabi before Bahrain too. A flight with a bus like route.

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