Red Eye Flights – Vegas, Florida & Hawaii

Meaning

A red eye flight describes flights which travel west to east and depart late at night and arrive very early in the morning. The term red eye comes from the fact that the timing of these flights give you very little sleep, if any at all. Red eye flights are often mistakenly confused with long haul flights, but the two are not the same.The main difference is that long haul flights are usually longer than 7 hours, so it’s very possible to get a good nights sleep, thus avoid the red eye effect.

Red eye flights are characteristically scheduled very late in the evening making it not possible for you to sleep before the flight. The flight itself is usually only around 5 – 7 hours in duration. Once again, not enough time for a good sleep because the eastwards journey delivers you a few hours ahead of your local departure time. Finally, red eye flights generally arrive very early in the morning, but not early enough for you to get anymore sleep. They’re not called red eye flights for nothing!

Las Vegas

By definition red eye flights travel from west to east, therefore red eye flights to Las Vegas are a misnomer. The main airlines to search when looking for red eye flights to Vegas are Delta, Continental and US Airways. Most of the other airlines have been slowly trimming their red eye Vegas schedules, so don’t offer good deals anymore.

Advantages

There’s many added advantages to traveling at night which only veteran travelers seem to realize. To begin with, there’s typically fewer passengers. This in essence means smaller check in queues, significantly less trouble with security, plus a reduced chance of getting yourself seated in between a couple of elephants with crying kids to your back and front! Most of the time on these flights people are much less irritated and more relaxed. Most people just want to get a few hours shut eye before touchdown at their destination, and will normally read a book or watch a movie before getting some sleep.

Florida

You can use the airlines mentioned above to find red eye flights to Florida with the added addition of JetBlue. JetBlue Airways gives you a large choice of potential red-eye flight alternatives. You can easily call up the JetBlue customer service network and talk with a consultant about the red-eye flight opportunities. With JetBlue you can also book over the phone with your credit card.

Hawaii

When searching for red eye flights on the internet it’s best to only use aggregator sites which search multiple airlines at once, and more importantly, don’t charge you a booking fee. The best ones to look at are Kayak.com and Mobissimo. Kayak has a special place for red eye flights in the search results. After you do a search simply look down in the left hand corner and you’ll see it.

In summary, red eye flights are less expensive, much less crowded, and more likely to give you the chance to rest. Let’s be honest, on longer flights you are going to be jet lagged anyway, so, you might as well fly at night.