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.

easyJet Switzerland has an over-night round-trip from Basel to Gran Canaria in summer. They had given up all similiar runs (AYT, SAW) before that, leaving this one as an equally unattractive oddball for crew and customers ...

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!

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 also avoid flights before 10am if possible, as that means getting up before 7am.

The worst timed flights for me are the ones that I am late for....

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?

Early arrival Red Eyes. I am West Coast based so catching those tailwinds and arriving before 5am... not the best.

Ethiopian has a whole bunch of departures after midnight from ADD As well as most of their flights leaving the middle east back to ADD leaving at around 4:00 am.

There are truckloads of India - Middle East flights with "early morning" (night) departures, early morning arrival.

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.

airzona11 wrote:

Early arrival Red Eyes. I am West Coast based so catching those tailwinds and arriving before 5am... not the best.

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.

Over the years I've seen quite a few AV flights (mostly U.S.->SAL) that depart in the 2-4am range. MIA also has a bunch of overnight flights from South America that arrive before 5am.

The worst redeye I've taken was SFO-MSP. Right around 3 hours flying time, so barely any chance for sleep.

I think many European charter flights to and from holiday resorts are some of the worst-timed. I've been looking at Bourgas (LBBG) Airport's arrival and departure board last summer and several flights either arrived or departed in the middle of the night back to United Kingdom, Russia and Czechia. Also when residing in Sunny Beach near Bourgas Airport, I always felt bad for those who were going with the transfer-bus from Sunny Beach to Bourgas Airport at like midnight (2-3 hours before departure), mostly UK residents. One Balkan Holidays flight summer 2017 to and from Copenhagen and Bourgas goes like this every Sunday:

Departure Bourgas LBBG 0020 - Arrival Copenhagen EKCH 0155
Departure Copenhagen EKCH 0245 - stopover in Varna 40 minutes - Arrival Bourgas LBBG 07.30

Even worse with the Billund departure:

Departure Bourgas LBBG 0120 - Arrival Billund EKBI 0310
Departure Billund EKBI 0400 - stopover in Varna 40 minutes - Arrival Bourgas LBBG 0850

timpdx 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.

Aren't some Middle East schedules set due to temperatures in the summer?

cschleic wrote:

Aren't some Middle East schedules set due to temperatures in the summer?

I believe the flights are scheduled that way for connections to Europe and from there onward to the U.S. and Canada. High temperatures have nothing to do with it, is my impression.

Personally for me the flights I hate doing the most (all times in local)

AUH (0225) - SFO (0640)
AUH (0355) - ORD (0900)/YYZ (0830)
AUH (1000/1045) - JFK/IAD (1530/1630)

Any night turns to India/Pakistan are terrible too!

FlyingHollander wrote:

I absolutely hate afternoon/early evening departures for NA to EU.

I love afternoon departures from the U.S. to Europe. Leave at 4 pm, travel for 7 hours (no need for sleep) and arrive at 6 am. Better to skip a night than leave at 10 pm and fly through the night.

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.

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.

MartijnNL wrote:

FlyingHollander wrote:

I absolutely hate afternoon/early evening departures for NA to EU.

I love afternoon departures from the U.S. to Europe. Leave at 4 pm, travel for 7 hours (no need for sleep) and arrive at 6 am. Better to skip a night than leave at 10 pm and fly through the night.

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 agree that the afternoon departures from the US East Coast to Europe are dreadful. Lufthansa has a number of red eye flights with 5 am local time arrivals in FRA that leave the US around 4pm.

UA's 9:30am SIN-SFO is dreadful. A 16 hour flight starting that early in the morning is about the most boring flight imaginable. You are ready to fall asleep shortly before arriving in SFO where it happens to be 8:30am.

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.

My candidate is LO172: LCA-WAW 03:40 – 06:15
Terrible for the traveler, great for increasing aircraft utilisation.

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.

Most of the seasonal summer flights to the Mediterranean on Austrian. Most of them leave between 5 and 730am. The OS flights from the USA all arrive about 845am, which misses them. Not only do they miss the connection, but nothing from the UK, or even Germany makes it either.

And for those locals in VIE, they are probably not thrilled with getting up that early, if it's not for business purposes.

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.

Not that long ago Aeromexico and Mexicana would have flights that would leave at 1 or 2am guessing get into mexico like 5am. Obviously the Mexicana flights are no more not sure if AM does those late flights anymore

Jetstar and Qantas both have an flight that leaves Melbourne at Mid-Night, then arrives in Auckland at 5am. Nice way to spent the night for 4hours on an A320/738.

I had a flight last year on Turkish from Dar Es Salam that left at 3:30 AM. Miserable time to leave.but made the connecting flight to the US possible through Istanbul.

Out of the ones I've seen and experienced:
- HKG ICN redeye on OZ - three hours, middle of the night (not sure this one is still scheduled)
- most flights into and out of EVN (Yerevan) - departure after midnight, three hours from WAW for example, landing around 3:00 or 4:00 am, departure back to Europe equally bad...

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

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!

Actually a 23:00 departure is awesome for the passenger type taking that flight, land in IBZ around 2.30am local, wait for the bus transfer to the resort, an hour on the bus 3.30, still time to catch the early morning DJ sets and a whole day of sleep before you start over again.

Now getting back at 3.35am, counting back, that does suck, cause you have to wait around all day with no hotel room to schlep to the airport dog tired after 14 days of mad partying (see first part of my response), wake up bleary eyed at LGW to go back and crawl into bed and back to work.

Ok, that was me 25 years ago, not sure I could handle it now....

rebr wrote:

There are truckloads of India - Middle East flights with "early morning" (night) departures, early morning arrival.

I recall also taking a DragonAir (now Cathay Dragon I guess) HKG-BLR that arrived BLR around 2am. Return to HKG left BLR around 4am. I think the times have since changed on that flight a bit though. LH from FRA does something similar, arriving after midnight into BLR and leaving again in the middle of the night.

VS4ever 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!

Actually a 23:00 departure is awesome for the passenger type taking that flight, land in IBZ around 2.30am local, wait for the bus transfer to the resort, an hour on the bus 3.30, still time to catch the early morning DJ sets and a whole day of sleep before you start over again.

Now getting back at 3.35am, counting back, that does suck, cause you have to wait around all day with no hotel room to schlep to the airport dog tired after 14 days of mad partying (see first part of my response), wake up bleary eyed at LGW to go back and crawl into bed and back to work.
Ok, that was me 25 years ago, not sure I could handle it now....

Just curious as to why you would not get a hotel room for that last evening.

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.

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?

My friends took that flight that earlier this year to connect to CUN, PHX-DFW-FLL-CUN. I have to imagine connecting in DFW at 5AM is a pretty horrendous experience.

While we're talking PHX, AA has a host of redeyes from PHX that depart in the 12-1AM timeframe that suck. I've flown both the STL and ORD redeyes.

US Midwest/East coast-Ireland flights are always pretty bad. They typically leave early evening and are only in the air for six hours or so and land at 1-2AM on your body clock.

HNL-DFW isn’t a fun flight either. One of the AA flights leaves at 5PM Hawaii time and is a 7 hour flight or so. Lands at 1AM on the body clock which is 5AM local time. Then, nothing is open in the airport.

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

dfwjim1 wrote:

VS4ever 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!

Actually a 23:00 departure is awesome for the passenger type taking that flight, land in IBZ around 2.30am local, wait for the bus transfer to the resort, an hour on the bus 3.30, still time to catch the early morning DJ sets and a whole day of sleep before you start over again.

Now getting back at 3.35am, counting back, that does suck, cause you have to wait around all day with no hotel room to schlep to the airport dog tired after 14 days of mad partying (see first part of my response), wake up bleary eyed at LGW to go back and crawl into bed and back to work.
Ok, that was me 25 years ago, not sure I could handle it now....

Just curious as to why you would not get a hotel room for that last evening.

a lot of folks flying that route would be on a package holiday, and in summer in IBZ, very few rooms available because of the sheer volume of people, so you buy your 14 days in a hotel, then you are on your own for the last day, i've dealt with that many times on holidays to the med as I am sure others will have too. Not quite the same as it is here in the US, where in ordinary circumstances you are correct you might consider buying the extra night.

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.

Sometimes red-eyes make sense. Eastern (the original) used to offer late-night flights on their A-300's. They actually were cargo flights, with the hold full of cargo, and they sold seats to passengers who were not allowed to check any baggage, but they knocked a considerable percentage off the ticket price.

To add to my previous suggestion, United runs red-eyes from ORD, EWR and IAD to PUJ during peak season. Some of the timings include 22:30 departure out of ORD, arrival into Punta Cana at 05:00, & you guessed it, 06:00 departure back to ORD. The IAD is bad too. 21:15 departure out of IAD, arrives at 02:00 in PUJ then departs at 03:00 back to IAD for 6am. Those have to be tough on the flight crews!

Westjet also runs a YYZ-CUN redeye during peak season as well. Leaves YYZ at 21:15 arrives CUN at 01:35. Departs CUN at 02:45, arrives YYZ at 06:50.

From where I am, I think it's this one

PR127 JFK0015 – 0330YVR0515 – 0945+1MNL

Bad for 3:30am arrival at YVR, bad for 5:15am departure, and bad for people going from JFK and MNL to have a landing and take off in the middle of the night.

FSDan wrote:

Over the years I've seen quite a few AV flights (mostly U.S.->SAL) that depart in the 2-4am range. MIA also has a bunch of overnight flights from South America that arrive before 5am.

The worst redeye I've taken was SFO-MSP. Right around 3 hours flying time, so barely any chance for sleep.

I have to agree with that one. I flew it earlier this year as part of SFO-MSP-YYZ. I really struggle to get much sleep on any flights under 8 hours. DFW-LHR is about the shortest transatlantic flight that I can get a decent sleep on. Generally the longer the flight, the better rested I am, and the less jetlagged (regardless of being in F/J/Y).

FlyingHollander wrote:

I absolutely hate afternoon/early evening departures for NA to EU.

This. I loathe these flights as well, as there is virtually no chance to get any meaningful amount of rest unless you skip dinner and breakfast (which easily take up half of the flight if flying, say, from the US East Coast to NW Europe).

I once took a redeye flight from MXP to SVO that left some time after 23:00, landing in Moscow in the early morning. The actual flying time is only about three hours, so it's basically a night without sleep that yields a fairly miserable day afterwards.

Early morning departures (05:00-ish) to summer holiday destinations are also fairly brutal. However, I suppose there is the advantage of being able to enjoy a full day at the beach upon arrival.

Conversely, the best flight in terms of departure and arrival times that I've had recently was SYD-AUH, leaving at 22:00 and landing at 05:00 - essentially resulting in 14 hours of nighttime. I nodded off for a couple of hours, woke up briefly and then slept a full eight hours. I felt great afterwards, also in terms of body clock adjustment.

Similarly, I've always enjoyed late-night departures to Europe e.g. from HKG: the flights are long enough for one to get sufficient sleep, and the early morning arrival is great.

Airdolomiti wrote:

Similarly, I've always enjoyed late-night departures to Europe e.g. from HKG: the flights are long enough for one to get sufficient sleep, and the early morning arrival is great.

They're great I agree. You can check-in downtown, go out with friends for the evening (usually Lan Kwai Fong or Wanchai), leave the island about 9:30pm/9:45pm and still have plenty of time to catch your flight and then sleep en route.

I think the East Coast TATL to EU are bad for visitors, but a 6am arrival at LHR works well for me as I live fairly close to LHR. I'm home before 8am and then after a 3-4 hours sleep, showered and up again at noon / 1pm refreshed and ready to go. The ones I don't like are the West Coast to LHR that arrive around 2pm as I have to try and stay awake for 8 hours or so after I arrive.

MartijnNL wrote:

FlyingHollander wrote:

I absolutely hate afternoon/early evening departures for NA to EU.

I love afternoon departures from the U.S. to Europe. Leave at 4 pm, travel for 7 hours (no need for sleep) and arrive at 6 am. Better to skip a night than leave at 10 pm and fly through the night.

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.

That's the schedule publish by the airline however I was on that flight in Novembrer and we parked at the gate at 02:30am!

ORDJOE wrote:

Not that long ago Aeromexico and Mexicana would have flights that would leave at 1 or 2am guessing get into mexico like 5am. Obviously the Mexicana flights are no more not sure if AM does those late flights anymore

AM flights from LHR, CDG and the second MAD departures are arround 22:30 and all arriving between 3:30am and 5am.

Greetings.

To be clear, I actually really appreciate the existence of these flights, because I can get a full day of vacation and work without losing anything except a great night's sleep. If available I almost always choose them.

A great example of how these work would be a recent trip to LAX. I had 3 full days off and got 3 full days in LA thanks to a short red-eye. Westbound left IND at 600a and I was at the famous In-N-Out by 1030a. Then an 11p departure to ORD had me back in time to catch one of the Illinois service trains and goright back to work on day 4.

However the absolute worst experience I remember having was a dreadful US Airways departure from PHX (US 2084 for those keeping score) at 1155p, arriving in STL at 445a. With a flight time barely over 2.5 hours, but an entire night lost, it was a pretty rough morning in St. Louis.

777PHX wrote:

US Midwest/East coast-Ireland flights are always pretty bad. They typically leave early evening and are only in the air for six hours or so and land at 1-2AM on your body clock.

I did YYZ-DUB this past fall. Left around 6 pm and got in around 6 am there (which was midnight at YYZ). Too early to really get any sleep on the flight. It was a long day.

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. Sure, you've gotten no sleep, and you're jetlagged - but it's good for a fully productive day on the other side of the world, just push through the tiredness and such - and then check in to the hotel and have a good night's sleep. I find it's the best way of getting over jetlag... just push through it and then once you're really physically tired, you should be able to crash hard and establish yourself on the new timezone more quickly. That's what works best for me, in theory.

I think bad scheduling would be things like flights out of MUC, departing at 11:30pm or so, right before the midnight curfew. If they get delayed or have any tech issues, the plane is stuck on the ground until after curfew is over... which may seriously delay flights that have been delayed for trivial reasons. The curfews also put airlines operating at those locales into competitively undesirable scheduling, as often times they will be pushing departures that would best depart at midnight or 2am to earlier times, or later times. It erodes the many competitive advantages of the airlines that operate at those airports...

I see a few 22:30 departure 02:00 arrival. I would not consider that a red-eye, that is more a late night flight. I am taking B6 out of FLL in a few weeks leaving FLL at 21:55 and arriving in SJU at 01:20. Certainly not a red eye.

Basically for me, any short red-eye 5 or less hours, or any red-eye that leaves early in the evening or late afternoon I am not a fan of. Obviously short red-eyes are bad because you don't get much sleep, but at the very least I want them to be leaving as late as possible local time. Those 5:00pm European departures are tough, not because of the flight time, but because 5 hours in you are still not tired, but you only have 3-4 hours left to sleep. In May I am taking a 19:35pm departure to LHR from MIA, it was originally scheduled at 21:15, which is a nice departure time, 19:35 is right there in the middle.

Even for longer flights, I flew NRT-LAX in the winter, flight time 9 hours, but we took off at 17:30 local. So even 4-5 hours in I was not very tired. It was so odd to have dinner on Monday night, and then arrive and have breakfast again Monday morning.

By far the best red-eyes are ones that leave late and arrive in the morning. Like LAX-PPT. Leave at 23:55 arrive at 05:15 but still were in the air for 8 hours. By far the easiest ones to get some sleep on.

I enjoy early morning departures as long as they are 06:45 or later.

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 departure
AV LAX-BOG 3 AM departure
AV MIA-BOG 3:12 AM departure and 5:48 AM arrival
AV BOG-MIA 2:26 AM arrival
LA SCL-PUQ 2:00 AM departure and 5:25 AM arrival
CM LIM-PTY 2:35 AM departure and 6:11 AM arrival
SU SXF-SVO 12:30 AM departure and 4:05 AM arrival
SU SVO-ROV 1:55 AM departure and 3:50 AM arrival
SU SVO-KUF 1:50 AM departure and 4:30 AM arrival
SU KUF-SVO 3:55 AM departure and 4:35 AM arrival
SU SVO-LED 1:35 AM departure and 2:50 AM arrival
SU LED-SVO 3:50 AM departure and 5:05 AM arrival
SU SVO-VOG 2:00 AM departure and 3:50 AM arrival
SU SVO-KRR 1:25 AM departure and 3:45 AM arrival
SU EVN-SVO 2:55 AM departure and 4:45 AM arrival
UT VKO-MMK 1:55 AM departure and 4:15 AM arrival

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

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 also avoid flights before 10am if possible, as that means getting up before 7am.

Ditto. For red-eyes, the later the better. Anything before 10am is bad because of traffic getting to the airport. I live only 40mi from the airport but during the morning rush hour that's easily a 2 hour drive. Yuck, no thank you. Some of my co-works like taking a 6am flight. I prefer to fly the night before and get a decent night sleep.