This flight seems very slow. I’ve just compared it to some short haul flights locally - 1hr 10 mins gets me 650km.
The flight in the article takes 55 minutes to go 178km. Short flights will have proportionally more time taxing etc, but this alone wouldn’t appear to explain it.
Aircraft are limited to a speed of 250kts below 10,000ft unless they're in an airport's control zone and then they're limited to 200kts. So, given the time to navigate Frankfurt's complex airspace, as well as balancing how much gas needs to be burned to get high to go fast, when you will shortly need to come off the throttle and descend anyways, versus just staying low and within the speed limits, I can see 55 minutes being well within the realm of reason.
The shortest commercial flight I ever took was from HOU to IAH†, a flight distance of 24mi/39km. I was surprised how long it took. At first I thought it was because of traffic, but a member of the flight crew told me, "We go low and slow."
†This was back when Continental was all mad about the parking situation at IAH, and so if you had an outbound flight from IAH, it would let you park for free at HOU and then add on a free HOU→IAH segment. At the time, you used to get 500 frequent flyer miles just for getting into the air, so it was an option I exercised as often as I could.
I can tell you that the seats were all on one side of the plane. It was a proper Continental craft. Not a puddle jumper like I've been on going to remote places in the northwest.
Rules about on-timed-ness and passenger compensation for delays mean that airlines now add buffers to their flight times, so most of the times it's "Wahey, we're early!", when they do experience delays they end up landing at the advertised landing time, saving them from those compensation payments.
I’m in New Zealander. Short flights (internal) are something you just rock up and get on to, and there is little messing about. They don’t even require ID.
This will be the block time; gate-to-gate. It's exactly the same time that United blocks for e.g. the LAX-SAN flight, which is actually ever so slightly shorter.
The flight in the article takes 55 minutes to go 178km. Short flights will have proportionally more time taxing etc, but this alone wouldn’t appear to explain it.