You can actually fly to Glasgow from Edinburgh Airport

Imagine you find yourself in Edinburgh Airport waiting for your flight to some exotic foreign destination and you spot the peculiar sight of a flight to Glasgow on the departure board.

Yes, Glasgow. From Edinburgh.

That's what happened for one traveller prior to jetting off from the airport this afternoon, who shared their surprise at seeing the flight pop up on the departure board with a friend.

The friend tweeted: "A friend of mine sent me this from Edinburgh Airport, are there Edinburgh to Glasgow flights? Ridiculous if so!"

We were pretty flabbergasted at the sight, which made us cast our minds back to a July last year when it looked like someone chartered a flight between the two cities to save them the 40-odd mile trip along the M8 - although it transpired that it could have been a 'positioning' flight.

So why would a regular passenger jet be travelling between the two then? It turns out that the flight in question is a Loganair flight, and this evening's flight will be the fourth in the past week.

Information from Flightradar 24 showing a similar flight from Edinburgh to Glasgow the other day (Flightradar24.com)

The flight is actually the second leg of a service from Southampton to Glasgow via Edinburgh, which is a short-term measure by the airline to combine what normally is to separate flights between the English city and Scotland's two largest cities - which has been put in place while while passenger numbers recover from the effect of the coronavirus pandemic.

Unfortunately , Loganair have confirmed that travellers are unable to buy tickets to travel between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the flight - which lasted 13 minutes the other day.

A Loganair spokesman said: "This is a very short-term expedient to combine our Glasgow-Southampton and Edinburgh-Southampton services while passenger numbers recover from the effect of the pandemic.  

"From August, flights will be separate and even until that time, we don’t sell tickets for travel only between Glasgow and Edinburgh."

So if you want to see what its like making the short journey by plane before the flights return to normal, you'll have to travel down to Southampton first. And be quick!