This is the shortest international airline!
According to CNN, the journey between the Caribbean islands of Anguilla and Saint Martin takes just eight minutes, making it the world's shortest international airline.
The flight connects the British overseas territory, the island of Anguilla, which has an area of slightly over 100 square kilometers, and the 7.2-kilometer-long island of Saint Martin, which belongs to France in the north and the Netherlands in the south.
Captain Carl Avery Thomas, an owner of Anguilla Air Services, the only company offering scheduled flights between the two islands, said maintaining air connections is extremely important for a small island like Anguilla.
Most Anguilla households have at least one person who works in tourism, which is the island's main source of income.
Aside from tourists, the aircraft plays an important role in supporting the local population by providing free rescue services and delivering medical equipment or patients.
"We've always done it since I started the company. It's a real joy to find someone missing," said Thomas, whose plane takes off whenever a fishing boat goes missing.
The plane never flies higher than 300 meters above the ground and provides views of the blue Caribbean waters, long and curving sandy beaches, and luxurious private homes and resorts.
In the eastern Caribbean Sea, Anguilla is a British overseas colony. It is the most northerly of the Lesser Antilles' Leeward Island. The Valley is the island's main town and administrative center. Anguilla is a renowned tourist destination known for its environment and beautiful beaches and waterways.
Anguilla was colonized by Arawakan-speaking Indians who called island Malliouhana long before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean. They were originally from South America's Orinoco River region and came to the island around 2000 BCE.
Anguilla was founded by British immigrants from Saint Kitts in 1650 and has since remained a British province managed as part of the Leeward Islands colony. The British did not encounter any Arawaks on the island, but their settlement was destroyed in 1656 by a raid by Indians from one of the neighboring islands. The colonists had a terrible time in the early years. A French expedition assaulted the island in 1666, and a joint Irish-French raid in 1688 caused the majority of the colonists to seek refuge in Antigua.
