Air Canada Jazz from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg is pretty frustrating, It's mostly annoying because there is only one flight a day leaving at 5:40am just to spend 2 hours in a dash 8, no other option if your Mileage program is with *A.

Jetsouth wrote:

I always dislike the majority of flights going to Europe that leave early in the evening from Toronto or New York and arrive in Europe first thing in the morning. Can't sleep in the plane, and you arrive in Europe in the morning, and feel totally jet-lagged for the day. I wonder why there are not more flights that leave North America early in the morning and arrive in Europe early evening. Then you can get a good night's sleep in Europe and are refreshed the next morning.

I think there are a few things at play that make carriers opt for redeyes to Europe, though if I had to guess, I think #1 could be the biggest factor:

1. Aircraft utilization. For US carriers, a plane can spend most of the day doing other flights do an overnight flight to Europe, return to the US midday the next day and then continue on again to work other flights. For a European carrier, a plane that leaves Europe in the middle of the day for a mid-afternoon US arrival can then turn right around and do a red-eye back to Europe before continuing on to perform other day flights. On the flip side, for a day flight to Europe, that plane needs to arrive in the US the night before, then RON in the US. It will then arrive in Europe the following night and have to RON again.

2. Time zones: With the change in time zones, day flights to Europe are really only really feasible from the eastern part of the US. A plane that left LAX at 5am wouldn't get to London until 11:30pm or midnight.

3. O&D passenger loads. Related in part to #2, because the day flights that do exist have to leave relatively early US time, there are limits on how many connecting flights can get to the US hub to funnel additional passengers to the flight. (e.g. when AA runs their day flight ORD-LHR, it leaves at 9:05am so you have to be into ORD earlier than that to connect. For passengers wanting to fly a DFW-ORD-LHR day flight on AA, this means taking the first departure to ORD which, in a random day I looked, is 5:05am). On the other end, in Europe, the flight arrives too late for all/most connections on that airline or its partners. Thus these day flights have to really more heavily on O&D than the redeyes do. This isn't a problem for all flights, but for flights to hubs/partner hubs and/or flights that rely on connecting traffic, it is an impediment.

sw733 wrote:

ryan78 wrote:

Gotta be Spirit's IAG (Niagara Falls, NY) to FLL. Departs IAG at 02:00 arrives in FLL at 05:24. Absolutely terrible, I hated every minute of that flight, coupled with the 2.5 hour drive down to Marathon in the Florida Keys after, never again.

I would assume a lot of the cruise passengers love this schedule though as it allows for a bit of a delay, just in case, before they need to be at the ship, but also avoids the night of hotel.

There may be some on the flight going to FLL to catch cruises. However most of the traffic are "snowbirds" from the Toronto area who come to South Florida for the winter. Fares from IAG are much less than from YYZ, enough to convince Canadians to drive to IAG to catch a NK flight. The same applies for PBG flights which serve the Montreal area.

Although the times aren't perfect, it allows NK to make use of aircraft which would just sit on the ground overnight.

compensateme wrote:

There's a tremendous amount of short redeyes in the USA; these flights exist primarily for aircraft utilization & re-positioning and historically are the cheapest flights on the route.

A redeye from LAS-DFW might sound great when you book it -- 'I can play in Las Vegas all day, get some rest of the plane, then get a full day's work in' -- until you get onto the aircraft, realize actual flying time is less than 2 hours and you'll be lucky to get 90 minutes sleep.

A work crisis - certainly not my choice - had me on AA's DEN-CLT red eye a while back, and it's rough. Currently, AA 2048 leaves DEN at 1:18am and arrives in CLT at 6:19am, which is a block time of just 3 hours, 1 minute due to going two time zones east. It's just not possible to get a real night's sleep at all on that. My eyes were literally red by early afternoon.

That said, that these flight exist show there is demand - earlier evening departures from the western US would generally arrive between 2 and 5 am in many places, so instead it seems less bad to be in the air in the dead of the night, when folks should get some sleep, and arrive closer to dawn. This also allows decent connections when arriving in an eastern hub.

While I take a lot of red eyes and overnights from the US to Europe, I always struggle with the India departures in the middle of the night. I know that many exist to allow connections onward from the European hubs, particularly to the Americas, but they mark the start of a very long day.

UltimateDelta wrote:

Agreed. I've flown on DL's redeye SLC-ATL several times, and while I admit that from a convenience standpoint, it's great (I don't have to miss class, and it gets me there while I would otherwise not be doing anything), but getting to ATL at 3AM body clock time is freakin' miserable.

I fully agree. It was one of the worst (if not worst) red-eye I've ever taken. I live in CA, so it was like a 2 AM arrival for me.

MiddleEastMike wrote:

AUH (0225) - SFO (0640)

I've taken that one too, and it also terrible. 16 hours in a fully packed 3-4-3 77L with a window seat. Not fun.

timpdx wrote:

I was just going to mention the awful 3-4AM departures DEL/BOM to DXB/AUH and such.

The flight itself isn't too bad, but I was dead tired right before departure.


Probably one of the worst timed flights I've been on is CX 659, HKG-SIN.

HKG (0150) - SIN (0540)

phlwok wrote:

[
A work crisis - certainly not my choice - had me on AA's DEN-CLT red eye a while back, and it's rough. Currently, AA 2048 leaves DEN at 1:18am and arrives in CLT at 6:19am, which is a block time of just 3 hours, 1 minute due to going two time zones east. It's just not possible to get a real night's sleep at all on that. My eyes were literally red by early afternoon.

Yeah, midcon redeyes are just painful. Even transcon (e.g. LAX-JFK) redeyes feel somewhat short to me to get a real night's sleep, but they are at least bearable. Did SFO-DFW of LAX-DFW (maybe both) a few times on a redeye and ouch, that was no fun.

germanwings used to fly to some turkish destinations overnight from Hamburg. Leaving at roughly 11pm, returning at 6am just after the curfew.

I once flew to Istanbul on one of those flights, the return departed Istanbul (SAW) at 3:40am. It was really uncomfortable! At German airports without curfews like Hanover, Berlin SXF or Cologne there are some flights departing at 4am to destinations like Antalya or Palma Mallorca.

I can imagine that the daytime eastbound TATL flights are pretty bad.

Newbiepilot wrote:

Short red eye flights are bad. I think red eye eastbound flights with arrival times before 7am local are terrible. .

There are flights from various Alaska destinations into SEA on AS......a dark "sleepy" kind of flight, with not enough time to sleep......then a few here and there end up passing out somewhere in the airport......and missing their connection on AS or whoever...

Freshside3 wrote:

Newbiepilot wrote:

Short red eye flights are bad. I think red eye eastbound flights with arrival times before 7am local are terrible. .

There are flights from various Alaska destinations into SEA on AS......a dark "sleepy" kind of flight, with not enough time to sleep......then a few here and there end up passing out somewhere in the airport......and missing their connection on AS or whoever...

I did ASA732 SEA-IAH this summer. 2245 departure and 0425 arrival. Those west coast-central redeyes with relatively early departures are killers.

DFW789ER wrote:

People have gotten spoiled. In the 70's, there were tons of late night/early morning flights. DL and EA both had major banks of flight departing ATL after midnight. Braniff had a 3 stop ORD-DAL flight that departed ORD at 01:15 and arrived DAL at 05:59. BNA had departures to MEM at 02:00 continuing west. There was a CLT-CHA timed roughly around at 03:00 arrival at CHA. Some were likely for the purposes of repositioning aircraft. I flew on a couple those. They were fuller than you'd expect.

I can remember flying both DL & EA SEA-PDX, both had L-1011's, EA left around 2:30am arriving PDX at 3:10a, DL left at 3:25am arriving PDX 4:05am. Both were tail ends of larger routings.

I'm a regular on 5J 243/242 HKG-ILO on Cebu Pacific, which depart HKG at 0220 and arrives 0450, return is bit better at 2305 - 0135+1.

I hated this flight but this is the only n/s flight between HKG and ILO.

YLWbased

We did Santorini JTR to FCO on Alitalia at 2am local time. That was awful. Had to leave hotel by 11am. By nine we were ready to leave but couldn't check in at the airport because they didn't open until 11. There was no where to sit. When we did check in the gate was packed with Vueling pax. Worst part was two hours just to go west and arrive an hour later. Then wait eight hours for our AA flight to Philly. Nice utilization but the flight was wide open. At least the brief service was good

Personally, the worst flight I ever took was an AS flight between FAI and SEA. The flight left FAI at 2:30AM and then arrived in SEA at around 5:30am.

The DEN-CLT redeye has to be pretty bad as well. It has to be one of the shortest redeyes in the AA system. Flying time sometimes is as little as 2h30m.

UA155 leaves MAJ at 20:10 and arrives in HNL at 02:50.

USAirALB wrote:

The DEN-CLT redeye has to be pretty bad as well. It has to be one of the shortest redeyes in the AA system. Flying time sometimes is as little as 2h30m.

PHX-MCI/STL/MSP/DFW are all shorter. That being said though, I think DEN-CLT is the shortest redeye that is flown daily. The PHX segments are only flown on flex nights.

Another unbearably late flight is the PHX-CLT that leaves at 2:20 AM. Gets into CLT at a decent hour but nothing about a 2:20 AM departure is people friendly.

I hate the BR Manila flight that departs at 4:20 in the morning. Terrible.

AS has started running a bunch of northbound red eyes to ANC. At various times of the year LAX-ANC, LAS-ANC, and ORD-ANC will feature midnight departures and arrival into ANC around 3:30 or 4:00 AM after a 5-ish hour flight with a time zone change. Painful.

There's also good old AS121, SEA-ANC on a combi that leaves SEA about 12:30 AM.

MaxTrimm wrote:

While reading the thread about CRJ/ERJ redeyes, it lead me to the question: What are the most poorly timed commerical flights in the system? (e.g. 0200 departure, 0415 arrival or something like that.
I thought I'd be interesting to see what people can find.

Many have already mentioned the India-ME/Europe departures. But there are also quite a few domestic flights out of BOM...

Examples:

IndiGo 154 departs BOM at 0155 and arrives in DEL at 0405
Jet Airways 4381 departs BOM at 0215 and arrives in BLR at 0345
Jet Airways 348 departs BOM at 0300 and arrives in HYD at 0415
Jet Airways 463 departs BOM at 0300 and arrives in MAA at 0450
Air India 31 departs BOM at 0135 and arrives in AMD at 0250

I am guessing these flights provide connections to pax arriving from Europe.

FlyingHollander wrote:

I would gladly take a midnight-2am departure for an overnight flight. The later the better for those in my opinion, makes sleeping a lot easier. I absolutely hate afternoon/early evening departures for NA to EU.

I agree if it's within the US. A couple of months ago I was on a LAX-BOS redeye that was originally supposed to leave around 9pm and get to BOS around 5:30am. It ended up being delayed by 2 hours

But it also has to do with the arrival time.

I've heard the 12:30am SEA-MSP flight arriving around 5:15am is not fun, fortunately have never experienced it.

And if a JFK-LHR flight leaves at 12am you're getting there at around 12pm. That's why a 9pm-10pm departure time would be better.

intotheair wrote:

Newbiepilot wrote:

Short red eye flights are bad. I think red eye eastbound flights with arrival times before 7am local are terrible. Pretty much every Icelandair USA - Iceland flight falls in this category.

The Icelandair flights actually aren't quite so bad since most of the US-Iceland flights at least arrive after 6am. The ones that are really awful are the ones on Wow.

LAX 11h20 KEF 04h10 +1
KEF 16h00 LAX 17h30

In practice, the flights from SFO and LAX also often arrive 30-60 minutes before schedule. Arriving at 3:30 is pretty abysmal both for those staying in Iceland as well as those connecting to Europe 3 hours later.

Generally these schedules are driving by one of these factors:

1. it's a low yield market, and airlines use the opportunity for overnight flying. From an accounting viewpoint, if they cover the direct operating costs and then some, it contributes to overall revenues.
2. the sector length and time difference means that's generally. from my experience east- west - east works best. eg. NYC-LAX-NYC, IST-LHR-IST, BOM-DXB-BOM etc.
3. some of the schedules are driven by connecting schedules, so the premium arrival/departure times are at either end of the sector, while the transit period (or worst time for the OD traffic) is middle of the night. This is often the case with the Gulf carriers.

PER-MEL can often take less than 3 hours, so those redeyes are absolutely awful. Especially on Tiger or Jetstar.

cschleic wrote:

I was just going to mention the awful 3-4AM departures DEL/BOM to DXB/AUH and such. Terrible.

I just had a bad one arriving from SEZ to AUH at 1AM and departing for LAX around 8AM.

Lots of dreadful connections through the Gulf Hubs.

At least a connection through a Gulf hub means that you're on another flight soon after - and you can catch up on some Zs especially if it's the longer of the two. Not ideal, but still.

How about these domestic Jet Airways runs? :

9W 665 BLR - CCU 02:10 04:40
9W 7152 MAA - CCU 02:20 04:35

More of these are popping up, also from IndiGo. It's understandable when AI/9W have such flights linking to intl departures from DEL/BOM, but these don't have that excuse.

dfwjim1 wrote:

Interesting topic...I suppose poorly timed flights are a matter of one's preferences. A flight in the United States that stands out to me is Spirit Airlines flight 972 from PHX to DFW. Flight leaves at around 0200 from PHX and arrives in DFW at 0500 and then leaves DFW at 0600 and arrives in FLL at 0930. Has anyone on this forum been on the PHX - DFW segment?

Many times... I've seen it both packed and empty.

Frontier has a 12:30 am flight from LAS-STL pretty much daily. I know a couple people that have taken it. On those hard seats, that time of night from LAS it sounds pretty horrible.

Jshank83 wrote:

Frontier has a 12:30 am flight from LAS-STL pretty much daily. I know a couple people that have taken it. On those hard seats, that time of night from LAS it sounds pretty horrible.

Actually, looking at their schedules they have a fair amount of flights that go back east that either leave at 12:30 am from LAS or arrive in the 4 am time frame at the destination.

phlwok wrote:

That said, that these flight exist show there is demand - earlier evening departures from the western US would generally arrive between 2 and 5 am in many places, so instead it seems less bad to be in the air in the dead of the night, when folks should get some sleep, and arrive closer to dawn. This also allows decent connections when arriving in an eastern hub.

Much of that demand is stimulated by lower fares, though; since most of these flights are opportunistic -- "created" from aircraft that would otherwise be idle (RON) -- airlines generally price them less (at some point). When fuel swelled in the late 2000s, the number of redeye flights dropped substantially (including the entire HP/US overnight bank). It's only been in recent years that many have returned; if fuel swells again, we'll see another reduction.

Siren wrote:

I love the early morning arrivals into the EU from the west coast. I think they're incredibly convenient - wheels up at 8pm Los Angeles time, wheels down at 6am in Paris.

That would be awesome. 8pm LAX time equals 5am in Paris. Not sure how many flights from LAX to CDG makes it in 1 hour, but that would be incredibly convenient.

Having said that I prefer long haul flights in the evening, in order for me to have a full day at work before my flight and makes it easier to sleep when tired. Just makes long flights feel shorter. Doesn't make much sense to me to get up early in the morning for a long haul flight.

Worst short haul flight recently was from MNL to PVG with a departure time at 11pm. The flight ended up being 9 hours delayed so had a pretty uncomfortable time in a boring terminal followed by 3 hours flight with minimal legroom.

UA's HNL-ORD flight leaves HNL at 4:50pm local time and arrives at ORD just before 5am CT. Why? What would be wrong with a 6:50pm departure, arriving at ORD just before 7am?

Years ago, my parents flew AA on the route with a similar arrival time. This isn't like redeyes from LAX or SFO, where a person may have a breakfast meeting at 7:30 in the Loop.

This is a leisure route. Even if you are connecting at ORD, do you really need to make the first bank of departures for the East Coast or smaller cities in the upper Midwest? And no one likes being asked to pick up relatives at ORD at 5 or 5:30 in the morning.

Siren wrote:

I love the early morning arrivals into the EU from the west coast. I think they're incredibly convenient - wheels up at 8pm Los Angeles time, wheels down at 6am in Paris.

You must have been on the Concorde then because an 8PM departure out of LAX is getting into CDG at 3:40PM local time. Most European longhauls out of LAX that arrive early morning are departing early/mid afternoon.

ckfred wrote:

UA's HNL-ORD flight leaves HNL at 4:50pm local time and arrives at ORD just before 5am CT. Why? What would be wrong with a 6:50pm departure, arriving at ORD just before 7am?

Yeah, I said that upthread. I did HNL-DFW that gets in before 5AM and it's hell on earth. HNL-LAX that gets in at that same time isn't much better.

In terms of long-haul flights, EK, EY, TK and QR schedules from South America (GRU and GIG) to IST, DXB, AUH and DOH are horrible. They depart on the early morning (3-4AM) and arrive to their respective hubs in the evening (8-10PM). Don't you think it would be better to depart from South America in mid-day, and arrive to the Middle East on morning next day? (So you won't loose a whole day when you arrive in destination).

I flew a MNL-CEB(Cebu, Philippines) on Cebu Pacific that departed at 01:25 and landed at 02:30. Such a short hop. Worst part was, we boarded via air stairs despite the terminal being empty of other departing flights.

Siren wrote:

I love the early morning arrivals into the EU from the west coast. I think they're incredibly convenient - wheels up at 8pm Los Angeles time, wheels down at 6am in Paris. .

How is that possible? A super long range supersonic aircraft that I'm not aware of? The AF nonstop departs LAX at 15:30 and arrives CDG at 11:15. If you have a 7:00pm departure out of JFK, that will get you in to CDG around 8:00am.

MartijnNL wrote:

A flight that doesn't appeal to me is AMS-MEX on AeroMexico. It leaves at 22.25 and arrives at 04.05 the following morning.

I don't see any problems on that. Arriving at major big cities at 4AM is way better than arriving from 6-8AM when those cities have no train services to downtown and the airports are located in the middle of nowhere and the traffic jams are nightmares, like MEX or GRU.
I'm not that familiar with MEX timetable but for GRU arrivals there are plenty of longhauls arriving pretty earlier in the day, these are today's ones:

TK 16 Turkish Airlines (EZE) Buenos Aires 3:25 AM Landed
SA 224 South African Airways (JNB) Johannesburg 3:55 AM Landed
JJ 8115 LATAM Airlines Brasil (BCN) Barcelona 4:25 AM Landed
CM 703 Copa Airlines (PTY) Panama City 4:30 AM Landed
JJ 8071 LATAM Airlines Brasil (FRA) Frankfurt 4:50 AM Landed

And many others...

I don't think those European holiday flights are that bad.

A midnight flight allows you to work the previous day, head home and pack your stuff before going to the airport.

An early arrival allows you to enjoy a full day of (lazy) holiday, since those destinations are the likes of Gran Canaria or Burgas. The only issue is when you have a rental car due to lack of sleep.

For the return the same. If you fly back on Saturday night, you save one hotel night and have the whole Sunday to "restart" on Monday. Better than flying Sunday morning or afternoon and arriving on a rush. If you fly on Sunday night, you maximize holiday time and you can even work on a "soft" Monday.

Another story is if you are travelling for work or, let's say, DEN-CLT in the middle of the winter.

I hate LH 401, departs JFK around 4:00 PM and arrives FRA usually just after 5:00 AM. The holiday makers going Mallorca aren't even drunk yet.

One route comes to mind is HKG-PUS, which I have flown on Korean Air with 737-900.
Korean Air, Air Busan and Cathay Dragon all serve the route with red eye service only, all departing HKG at around 2am, arriving PUS at around 6am. Given the one hour time difference, the flight time is actually just 2:50. Worse, the service is on 737/A320 and is FULL SERVICE, meaning they have lights on, serve full meal (yes, at 2am) and then even push the duty free shopping cart out to sell things. Only after all these are the lights turned off for you to sleep. By then it's typically 0430 already. Of course then the lights come back up at around 0530 in preparation of landing.

Hong Kong Airlines (HX) also has a number of BKK-HKG service that departs BKK at 3am or 4am, arriving HKG at 6am or 7am. However, these are attractive to Hong Kong people who are going to Bangkok for vacations, enabling them to maximize their vacation time, taking the very last flight out of BKK and literally going to work directly from airport as they arrive at HKG at 7am, after sleeping on the 2:40hr flights.

Another worse flight in the region including StarFlyer Muan (Korea) -Kitakyushu (Japan) seasonal service on A320, with the following schedule:
7G9611 KKJ2310 – 0020+1MWX 320
7G9612 MWX0120 – 0230KKJ 320

CPDC10-30 wrote:

Siren wrote:

I love the early morning arrivals into the EU from the west coast. I think they're incredibly convenient - wheels up at 8pm Los Angeles time, wheels down at 6am in Paris. .

How is that possible? A super long range supersonic aircraft that I'm not aware of? The AF nonstop departs LAX at 15:30 and arrives CDG at 11:15. If you have a 7:00pm departure out of JFK, that will get you in to CDG around 8:00am.

Heh, I've never actually flown to Europe out of the west coast, despite the fact I live out here - only from east coast (out of JFK, EWR, and BOS), and was too lazy to actually pull up any schedules. As an Avgeek, you can appreciate the fact that whenever I did have reason to travel, I would generate the most complicated itinerary I could get away with expensing to the company...

Ammad wrote:

DY789 wrote:

Over the Summer months, Monarch Airlines operates LGW - IBZ. (Not sure of the exact timings) but it leaves LGW at about 23:00 and gets back about 03:35. No thanks!

Many of Emirates, Fly Dubai flights to Pakistan did arrive after midnight and leave before 6:00 AM to feed 8:00 to 10:00 A.M departure bank at Dubai.

Flying time to Dubai from Karachi is two hour with one hour time again so effectively flight departing at 6:00 local PK time arrives at 7:00 at DXB time.
For example:
KHI-DXB
12:35 am 2:00 am flydubai 330
4:40 am 6:10 am flydubai 332

The timing of Pakistan (and by extension India flights) both to and from DXB is some of the worst I've ever experienced. Like many of the criticisms on here, it is impossible to get any sleep of actual substance on that short of a flight and you feel like crap when you arrive at 2AM. I have flown EK to ISB more times than I can remember and the grogginess you feel when you step out onto the stairs that early is like being hit with a metaphorical brick (or alarm clock). I know that a lot of this has to do with aircraft utilization in DXB, but for connections from the US, it is impossible to avoid anything less than a 14hr layover, which in itself is another massive downside of redyes. I would like to believe that in ISB's case, much of this also is the result of a very confined airport ramp space and thus limited slots. Hopefully when the new airport opens in August, EK, QR, and EY will retime their flights to take advantage of new slots, and get rid of the hellish timing and looong layovers at DXB, allowing us to arrive and just go to sleep for the night.

Is there a shorter redeye than PHX-DFW? I've done that one a few times and it is absolutely terrible. It's less than 2 hours, how you can get any sleep and go on to your next day is beyond me. I was falling asleep at my desk all day long after landing! Even LAX to DFW is still terrible.

I've also done the like 1-2am departures from ANC to SEA, but luckily I was connecting to DFW from SEA so I got more sleep. And it was crazy to think I left ANC and was home the same day by 1 or 2 in the afternoon.

Almost every flight in/out of Perth (PER) lol..

Have AA/UA/CO ever done a Texas-Boston redeye?

737max8 wrote:

Is there a shorter redeye than PHX-DFW? I've done that one a few times and it is absolutely terrible. It's less than 2 hours, how you can get any sleep and go on to your next day is beyond me. I was falling asleep at my desk all day long after landing! Even LAX to DFW is still terrible.

I've also done the like 1-2am departures from ANC to SEA, but luckily I was connecting to DFW from SEA so I got more sleep. And it was crazy to think I left ANC and was home the same day by 1 or 2 in the afternoon.

If PHX-DFW is terrible, how come you've done it more than once?

ua900 wrote:

To me it's shorter flights (2-4 hours) going north-south / south-north that arrive and/or depart in the wee hours. Tough to stay awake until departure, clubs are closed, minimal onboard service, short period of sleep available, no huge time difference to be leveraged, getting kicked off the plane before 5am even though you boarded after 1am, arriving at an airport in the middle of the night and having to drive home or to a hotel.

Examples:

UA EWR-BQN 1:45 AM arrival
UA BQN-EWR 2:55 AM departurel

I think every arrival and departure out of BQN and PSE at one point (maybe still) took place between 2am and 6am. I have no idea why they're scheduled that way, but I'd rather fly to SJU and get a rental car than have to deal with those times if it were me.

The other ones I don't understand are the Canadian flights which arrive back in Canada at or after Midnight. How can someone flying Florida-YYZ possibly connect to an onward flight with an arrival time of like 12:15am? Are they all O/D flights?

Pe@rson wrote:

737max8 wrote:

Is there a shorter redeye than PHX-DFW? I've done that one a few times and it is absolutely terrible. It's less than 2 hours, how you can get any sleep and go on to your next day is beyond me. I was falling asleep at my desk all day long after landing! Even LAX to DFW is still terrible.

I've also done the like 1-2am departures from ANC to SEA, but luckily I was connecting to DFW from SEA so I got more sleep. And it was crazy to think I left ANC and was home the same day by 1 or 2 in the afternoon.

If PHX-DFW is terrible, how come you've done it more than once?

In my situation I have to go where the empty seats are! I also forgot, have done it PHX-SAT also. Awful!

USAirALB wrote:

Have AA/UA/CO ever done a Texas-Boston redeye?

In the modern era, AA since the merger has adopted the USAirways practice of "flex" scheduling - drawing down frequency and capacity in and out of hubs on particularly slow traffic days (i.e., Christmas Day, Tuesdays in January, etc.) and ramping up extra frequency and capacity on peak traffic days (i.e., Sunday after Thanksgiving, Sundays in the summer, etc.). That practice has come to DFW, and it does include redeyes DFW-BOS. This year, AA has published schedules with a DFW-BOS redeye on around a dozen dates through early December. The flight typically departs DFW just before midnight and arrives in BOS just after 0400. Other East Coast cities that have gotten - and are, at least as of now, scheduled to get - this type of "flex" redeye include PHL, DCA, RDU, etc.

tonystan wrote:

Those hideous flights to Europe out of Delhi and Mumbai that leave at all hours of the morning!

I actually kind of like them. Put in a full day of work, get a good dinner and some time out on the town if you like, spend a bit of time in the lounge, and then fall asleep before you even take off. on DEL-LHR, I regularly pass out on the taxi ride out and don't wake up until we're over Germany or The Netherlands getting ready for descent.

No such thing as horrible times unless the flight is timed to leave late at night and arrives before sunrise (i.e. DEP @1205AM and ARR @0300) with no connection opportunities. Many of the flights in above replies are timed to meet connections either at the departure point or the arrival point for the airline operating the route. Emirates has many flights that leave at the most odd hours of the night (2AM, 3AM, 4AM) which are nicely banked with arriving flights. EK's business is big on connectivity, and if you're flying somewhere, what matters is really the time you leave your departure point and then your arrival time at your final destination - en route you're just connecting. Some airlines also opt to operate at such "horrible times" for better aircraft performance.

DFW789ER wrote:

People have gotten spoiled. In the 70's, there were tons of late night/early morning flights. DL and EA both had major banks of flight departing ATL after midnight. Braniff had a 3 stop ORD-DAL flight that departed ORD at 01:15 and arrived DAL at 05:59. BNA had departures to MEM at 02:00 continuing west. There was a CLT-CHA timed roughly around at 03:00 arrival at CHA. Some were likely for the purposes of repositioning aircraft. I flew on a couple those. They were fuller than you'd expect.

MEM had quite a few night coaches back then. Besides flying people around on cheap fares, they used the "night coaches" (as they were called) to move air cargo around the system that they didn't have the capacity for during the day.

The middle east is a mecca for flights at all hours of the night. RUH/DXB/AUH/JED/DOH are absolutely packed, wall to wall people in the middle of the night, all night, every night. There are flights going to Europe, Africa, North America, Asia, Australia. Everywhere at all hours. There are lots of domestic flights in Saudi Arabia in the middle of the night as well.

There are a few flights in the USA that have strange times. It is a peak season flight, but UA has a flight EWR-SJU. that leaves EWR at 8:30 p.m. and leaves SJU and returns to EWR at 1:30 a.m. It is often full.

B6 has a DEN-JFK redeye and UA has a DEN-EWR redeye (peak season). Both leave DEN at midnight and arrive in NYC at around 5:30.