{"id":36525,"date":"2026-09-14T16:25:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T16:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/?p=36525"},"modified":"2026-09-14T16:25:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T16:25:43","slug":"97-of-americas-red-eye-flights-take-off-in-the-west-and-overnight-flying-is-at-record-high-26-years-of-federal-data-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/air-service\/97-of-americas-red-eye-flights-take-off-in-the-west-and-overnight-flying-is-at-record-high-26-years-of-federal-data-show\/%20","title":{"rendered":"97% of America&#8217;s Red-Eye Flights Take Off in the West, and Overnight Flying Is at Record High, 26 Years of Federal Data Show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An analysis of every US domestic flight since 2000 found red-eyes concentrated in the Pacific and Mountain time zones, growing, and more reliable than daytime flights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About one in sixty US domestic flights is a red-eye, and 97 percent of them take off in the western United States, according to a new Champion Traveler analysis of 26 years of Bureau of Transportation Statistics flight records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The study counted every scheduled domestic flight reported to the federal government from 2000 through 2025 and classified as a red-eye any flight scheduled to depart between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. and land between 3 a.m. and 10 a.m. local time. In 2025, 115,580 of 6.9 million flights met that definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Key findings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Red-eyes are a western phenomenon. 97 percent of 2025&#8217;s overnight flights departed from the Pacific and Mountain states plus Alaska and Hawaii, a share that has never fallen below 95 percent since 2000.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The red-eye is at a record high. Overnight flights grew 54 percent, from 75,158 in 2000 to 115,580 in 2025, after a low in 2009 and a collapse in 2020.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Anchorage is the red-eye capital by share: 26 percent of its departures are overnight flights. Los Angeles leads by count with 19,064. Las Vegas flew the most red-eyes in America in 2000, lost more than half by 2010, and has since recovered.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The middle-of-the-night departure is disappearing. Flights leaving after midnight were 31 percent of red-eyes in 2000 and 14 percent in 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The legacy airlines lost the overnight market. American, Delta and United flew 97 percent of red-eyes in 2000 and 64 percent in 2025. Alaska Airlines is now the most red-eye-heavy carrier, and Southwest, which flew none for 25 years, took 5.6 percent of the market in its first year.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Red-eyes are more reliable. In 2025, 82.4 percent arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, against 77.6 percent of other flights, and they were cancelled less often.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The geography has a simple cause. An overnight flight from the West Coast crosses three time zones and lands on the East Coast at breakfast; the same trip westbound would land in the middle of the night, so airlines schedule almost no overnight flights in that direction. Among the 300 busiest red-eye routes in the study, 82 percent land in the Central or Eastern time zones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The full study, with a sortable table of every US airport&#8217;s red-eye departures in 2000, 2010, 2019 and 2025, airline shares back to 2000, departure hours, seasonality and reliability, is at <a href=\"https:\/\/championtraveler.com\/news\/red-eye-flights-share-of-us-flights\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/championtraveler.com\/news\/red-eye-flights-share-of-us-flights\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An analysis of every US domestic flight since 2000 found red-eyes concentrated in the Pacific and Mountain time zones, growing, and more reliable than daytime flights. About one in sixty US domestic flights is a red-eye, and 97 percent of them take off in the western United States, according to a new Champion Traveler analysis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,143,115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-service","category-airlines","category-national-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36526,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36525\/revisions\/36526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}