[phire]

Air NZ used to fly 737s between CHC and WLG. Runway to Runway flight time can be as little as 30min if the wind is blowing in the right direction. Feels weird because there is only about 5min of cruising between accent and decent.

However, demand wasn't high enough to justify non-stop round trips, they replaced the 737s with two A320 flights a day, with a bunch of ATR-72 and Dash 8 flights throughout the day.

The classic example is of course Hawaii Air Flight 243. Before the incident, that airframe accumulated 89,680 cycles in 19 years (over 35,496 flight hours) doing short hops between Hawaiian islands.