Not sure, but I believe that in the UK there are flights between Heathrow (N London), Gatwick (S London), and London City.
I used to fly from Rochester, MN to Minneapolis, MN often. Travelocity says the flight’s a little over a half hour. It’s really closer to 25 minutes.
I have flown from Elmira, NY to Ithaca on US Air - about a 6 minute flight in a DC-9.
I’m pretty sure no one does it anymore, but I’m positive at one time there were a couple of airlines that flew from Washington National to Dulles. Airline flights out of National were restricted to something like 750 miles, so the airline would stop at Dulles and then fly on to Denver or the west coast.
Not sure you could actually buy a ticket for that leg, though.
I also remember that both American and the long-dead Central Airlines had flights between Dallas Love Field and the old Amon Carter/Greater Southwest Airport in Ft. Worth.
Up until a few years ago, USAir had jet flights between Buffalo and Rochester, New York, about a fifty mile distance between airports. Now the closest destination to BNIA is Cleveland. At one time, you could take a jet between Buffalo and Toronto.
What might be more of a challenge is to find the longest flight between the two smallest metropolitan areas. Can you fly non-stop between … oh, Burlington, Vermont and Spokane, Washington? College Station, Texas and Appleton, Wisconsin?
Ooh! On a full-blown DC-9: Appleton, Wisconsin to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Midwest Express, 90 miles, 30 minutes
I flew a Milwaukee to Madison leg several times. I believe it took all of 19 minutes.
Many of the inter-Hawaiian island flights are under 20 min in the air. Honolulu (Oahu) to Lahina (Maui) is scheduled at 30 minutes, gate to gate. You’re in the air for 15 minutes or so.
Just checked the Hawaiianair.com site – Honolulu to Molokai is scheduled at 28 minutes gate to gate. Air time is probably less than 15 minutes.
Oops. Just saw restriction #1 of the OP. Carry on.
In the 1980s, Metro did fly the Houston Hobby to Houston Intercontinental and back run. They used a de Havilland Twin Otter, which put them right at the 20 passenger mark.
They catered to business people and let a local skydiving club pull the seats and jump from it on weekends. I’ve flown Metro, but I’ve never landed with Metro.
Minneapolis to St Cloud is 35 minutes.
St Cloud Minneapolis varies from 35-48 minutes.
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to
Doesn’t quite meet the OP’s criteria because it no longer exists, but sometime during the '80s, Continental briefly ran an Intercontinental-Hobby service with DC-9s. Service was scheduled for about 25 min. gate-gate, with about 15 spent in the air. The first couple of weeks they ran a promotion: 15 bucks each way and you got 500 frequent-flyer miles per segment; so I booked a round trip on a weekend and got a pretty good aerial view of the San Jacinto Monument and Ship Channel. IIRC, CO stopped the service after a couple of months due to light traffic.
United Express runs scheduled service between LAX and John Wayne in Orange county. Not too sure of the distance, but it is under 40 miles.
This route flies EMB-120 Brasilia bug smashers.
I’ve been on the LAX to Orange County flight. It’s 31 minutes according to Travelocity.
Almost…United has numerous daily flights between LAX and various lesser airports in the Los Angeles metro area:
LAX - Oxnard
LAX - Ontario
LAX - Orange County
LAX - Burbank
Depending on the particular flight, some of these are scheduled gate-to-gate in as little as 28 minutes.
As a slight tangent, I wonder if I found the shortest and fastest route served by a jet in the United States: Alaska Airlines does a 29-mile, 22-minute trip between Petersburg, AK and Wrangell, AK in a Boeing 737-200. (It doesn’t count for the purposes of the OP since it’s between two islands.)
US Airways provides several daily turboprop flights between Arnold Palmer Regional in Latrobe, PA and Pittsburgh International. Travelocity puts this in as another 30 minute gate-to-gate service, Mapquest puts the mileage between the two airports at 63 miles.
It seems that the service is intended mainly to get travellers from points east into Pittsburgh for flights out of the US Airways hub there, for as long as that hub exists. It is actually more advantageous to fly this one; driving would require routes that are traffic laden.
Do they even bother with serving the peanuts and drinks on these really short flights? Also, considering how long it takes to get to the airport, get parked or dropped off, get checked in and get to the gate and wait for the plane to take off, does it really save time to take such flights over driving?