From next month, one of the world's biggest widebody operators will be flying its flagship long-haul jet on a route shorter than many commutes. Qatar Airways is scheduling the Airbus A350-900 between Doha Hamad International and Bahrain International, a city-pair that measures just 80 nautical miles (148 km) across the Gulf.

According to Cirium Diio schedule data, the A350 appears five times in the coming months: on November 8 and 29, December 4 and 11, and January 3, 2027. Flight times are mercifully brief — QR1108 leaves Doha at 7:55 PM and lands in Bahrain at 8:50 PM, while the return leg QR1109 departs at 10:20 PM and arrives 55 minutes later. The December and January dates run in the morning instead, with QR1102/1103 at 8:35 AM and 11:00 AM. It is a quirky but bookable option for aviation fans who want to tick off a widebody flight on a route most airlines serve with narrowbodies.

For a few months this will be the world's shortest A350 service you can actually buy a ticket on. That title currently belongs to Ethiopian Airlines' fifth-freedom flights between Zurich and Milan Malpensa. There are technically shorter A350 hops out there, but you cannot book them on their own: a World2Fly A350 flying for Corendon Dutch Airlines covers just 41 nautical miles between Bonaire and Curaçao as a tag-on to its Amsterdam route, with no local traffic rights sold. Historically, the record goes to the 14-nautical-mile hop across the Congo River between Kinshasa and Brazzaville, once flown by Air France and Ethiopian Airlines with A350s.

The Doha-Bahrain A350 deployment is less exotic than it sounds. Widebodies on short Gulf hops are routine, and Qatar Airways has used the A350 on this route as recently as September, with 37 A350 departures planned across 2026 — roughly one in 25 flights on the route. The airline has thrown 14 different aircraft types at Doha-Bahrain since 2004, from the A320 family up to 777s and both A350 variants. Overall capacity is thin, though: three daily flights are scheduled in November, the joint-lowest November offering on record, down from a peak of seven daily departures in 2016.

Why care? If you collect aircraft types or want to fly the A350 without committing to a long-haul fare, a same-day Doha-Bahrain round trip on a widebody is a cheap-ish, easy win. Both cities are visa-friendly for most Western travellers, and Bahrain makes a worthwhile overnight side trip from Doha — Manama's souq and Pearl monument are under an hour from the airport by taxi. Just note the A350 only shows up on those five specific dates, so plan around them if the plane itself is the point of the trip.

Story via Simple Flying.