A 90 minute flight in an A380 – and other ridiculous flights the pandemic made possible

It's the world's largest passenger plane, capable of carrying almost 900 passengers in a double-decker fuselage so huge, so hulking, that getting airborne feels like a minor miracle. Yet the A380's range is just as vast, making it a star of long-haul, connecting Heathrow with the likes of Hong Kong, Singapore and Johannesburg. Of course, most of these giant airframes have lain dormant throughout the pandemic, but British Airways' A380s will return to service next month, blazing new trails from LHR – at last.

Their destinations? Alas, no Asian metropolis or winter sun haven: rather, the cities of Madrid and Frankfurt, some few thousand kilometres short of its usual legs. The news has enlivened the aviation industry this week – not only as a sign of further recovery after a perilous 18 months, but for the novelty of those pip-squeak routes. The airline intends to break its pilots in gently, you see, so will briefly eschew long-distance stints for flights of just 90 minutes (Heathrow-Frankfurt) while it re-trains staff on the airframe.

BA announced the move on Wednesday, confirming it will operate its A380s "to a number of short-haul destinations to allow for crew service familiarisation in November". Soon after, its regular long-haul services will resume: "to Miami and Los Angeles in the US, as well as Dubai in December".

How to score a seat on the mammoth flights to modest destinations? Unfortunately, BA has given no indication of how (or indeed, whether) passengers will be able to book this specific service: it has not revealed how often the flights will operate, nor the date that they'll cease. However, according to frequent-flyer website God Save The Points (GSTP), the A380 stints will begin on November 8, and will be served by four aircraft – heading to Frankfurt in the morning, and Madrid in the afternoon.

For aviation enthusiasts, the novelty will be hard to resist – but this is just one of the many bizarre flight routes that the pandemic has inspired. The past 18 months have witnessed a wealth of weird and wonderful jaunts: from 'flights to nowhere', to ultra-long-haul cargo routes to retrieve PPE and vaccines from China, with journeys lasting over 30 hours.

The curiosities began last March, as countries scrambled to repatriate citizens left stranded by travel bans and border closures. We saw the first non-stop service between Honolulu and Gatwick to repatriate cruise passengers, while British Airways 777s flew direct from Lima to Heathrow multiple times. The route, which would usually entail a stop-over, was provided especially to repatriate Britons stranded in Peru.

See also: ​'Phenomenal': How Australia got 22,000 stranded citizens home

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. "We operated the first ever non-stop flight from Addis Ababa to Salt Lake City – bringing US missionaries home," says Matthew Purton of Air Charter Service, which took on many such repatriations. "We also flew direct from Mozambique to LA – repatriating employees from a resource mining company – and made various connections between West Africa and Brazil."