Southwest Redeyes are About More Than Just Utilization

Southwest

After more than 50 years without scheduling a single redeye flight, Southwest has finally made the move. The initial batch of redeyes start in February, but the airline just released its summer schedule and the airline will be up to 33 routes by then.

I think conventional wisdom suggests that this is mostly a way to reduce unit costs, something that has been a real concern at Southwest as of late. By flying long-hauls overnight, the airline can increase utilization, and that lowers unit costs. This is absolutely a great benefit, but there is more to it than just that. This helps to improve the airline’s network.

I’m going to use a couple of examples to show what I mean, but first, let me start with the map we used in this week’s Cranky Network Weekly showing which flights will operate as redeyes next summer.

The benefit in Hawaiʻi has been discussed regularly, and it’s obvious. Because of how far it is from there to the East Coast, not operating redeyes means that it is just about impossible to fly too far east without spending the night somewhere. Now, Southwest can fly redeyes from the islands to the Western US and connect from there, or it can fly daylight flights to the Western US and connect to redeyes from there.

But there is a real benefit to travel within the mainland as well. As you can see on the map, the biggest city on the East Coast is Baltimore. It has redeyes from 12 different cities as far east as Denver. Every decent-sized city on the West Coast has a redeye to BWI with the strange exception of Oakland. I have no idea why Oakland is redeye-free, but that’s probably a question for another post.

As a resident of Long Beach, I was semi-excited to see that even we will get a redeye to BWI. (If you’re wondering why I was semi-excited, it’s because I always like to see us get new destinations… but you will not find me on a redeye if I can avoid it.) With that in mind, I decided to take a look at a random July Monday in 2025 and compare it to 2024 to see just how this changes the game.

Long Beach has 3 fewer daily flights in 2025 than in 2024. That’s primarily because poor performers to Colorado Springs and Kansas City are gone. Salt Lake also drops from 2x to 1x daily. But more notably, Chicago drops from 2x to 1x daily while BWI gets that new flight. I imagine these last two changes are related.

Chicago is of course an important destination, but it’s also the most useful connecting hub to the Northeast US without flying to BWI. The addition of a redeye to BWI allows Southwest to maintain connectivity around that region while being able to reduce Chicago to 1x daily. That should improve profitability in that market.

It’s the same situation in San Diego and in San Francisco, though some cities keep their Chicago frequencies and just enjoy the additional connectivity BWI offers.

I should note that the filed schedule in Long Beach doesn’t show any of the reduced turn times that Southwest has been talking about. If anything, Long Beach has some flights with slightly longer turn times, so that benefit has yet to be built in. That makes a year-over-year comparison cleaner.

This isn’t just about Long Beach, however. Looking through the West Coast cities, there was one that really stood out: Seattle.

Outside of Las Vegas which has five redeyes, it’s Los Angeles and Seattle that have the next most redeyes at four. Los Angeles may not be very surprising, but Seattle has never been point of strength for the airline.

The new redeyes from Seattle go to BWI, Chicago/Midway, Houston/HOU, and Nashville. Southwest hasn’t flown BWI daily since before the pandemic. Last summer it came back at 1x weekly, but now with the redeye, it goes daily again. Houston last flew before the pandemic while Nashville last flew daily in 2021. It was 2x weekly last summer, and it will be 8x weekly next year. Chicago already flies today, but it now has 1 flight move to a redeye.

This vastly improves Southwest position in the region. Seattle in summer is a huge destination, so this will make it easier for Southwest to serve its customers in other cities who want to go to Seattle. Connectivity through the east isn’t always that great, so this is a real change. And redeyes make the change possible.

In these situations, Southwest can decide whether it makes more sense to fly the airplane or sit it on the ground on the West Coast overnight. If that’s the choice, then you’re really only talking about variable costs that need to determine whether a flight is worth operating. And that lower cost base opens up opportunities that might not otherwise make sense.

So yes, cost is a part of this, but it also creates new connectivity and opportunity throughout the network. As is often the case at Southwest, this should happened long, long ago.

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20 comments on “Southwest Redeyes are About More Than Just Utilization

  1. To me this really highlights Southwest’s comparative weakness in the Northeast. To be clear, I’m not saying that it SHOULD be focusing on the Northeast (B6, DL, and AA are competing strongly in places like BOS, with UA in the mix for the NYC metro area, so the Northeast isn’t likely to be the best place for WN to expand), but the absence of redeyes to points northeast of BWI is very notable. As Cranky noted, flying WN on the East Coast one is often forced to connect through BWI or (much less often) BNA or ATL; WN doesn’t offer as many north/south nonstops as several other airlines.

    I assume that overtime WN will experiment with redeyes to the Northeast and to international markets, and will “see what sticks”. Should be fun to watch.

    1. BWI is my home airport so more options are always welcome. Is there any doubt left that WN has hubs? Along with controlling over 70% of traffic here they are also constructing WN’s first east coast maintenance facility at the airport. Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Providence and / or Manchester and BDL are added to the red eye schedule.

      1. To be clear, I wasn’t trying to knock BWI; I’ve connected through it multiple times on WN and haven’t had any complaints. To your point, WN definitely has hubs (in practice if not in name).

        I’ll be a little surprised if Manchester is added to the red eye schedule soon, just because it’s a shadow of its former self for WN, which has focused more on BOS than MHT in recent years (other airlines have also focused more on BOS, which I would argue has created the opportunity for airlines like Avelo to pursue service at smaller airports like MHT, PSM, & others). WN flies to 4 destinations from MHT vs 8 from BOS and close to a dozen from PVD.

        MCI (Kansas City) was also notably absent from the red eye flights, though given the strong NIMBY/anti-airport crowd in that area I wouldn’t be surprised if the locals fought hard against any proposed WN redeyes.

  2. I dont want to fly redeyes. I wish Southwest’s website + date picker would give you a checkbox that allowed for “no redeyes (anything departing between 11pm and 4am, let’s say)” and “no double connections” .
    That would be great for those times when you see a low fare to somewhere, but it is either a redeye or a double connection (often with a redeye involved).

  3. More connectivity makes sense however SWA has all those west coast & DEN red-eyes arriving around 5 a.m. and yet BOS, MHT, PVD, BDL, ALB, BUF, ROC, and ISP connections at BWI leave around 6:50 a.m. Connections from BWI-RDU, RIC, CLT, PIT, CLE, and DTW much later. Wow. On paper no reason first batch of obvious connections should head north around 6 a.m. The southern and western connections could be scheduled around 7:15 a.m. after the northern cities first flight of the day arrives in BWI around 6:30 a.m. (For example: L-BUF 5:15 a.m. arr BWI 6:30 a.m.). If they continue with such long connections after overnight flights–they are still seeding the market place to the big three. Thank you for an excellent article.

  4. “As you can see on the map, the biggest city on the East Coast is Baltimore. It has redeyes from 12 different cities as far east as Denver.”

  5. Not flying redeyes meant (or currently means) that WN flew alot of very early first flights and had many very late last flights which probably were some of their weakest flights from a performance standpoint. By flying redeyes, WN can eliminate some of those flights in favor of a redeye. Even though redeyes are usually not the strongest flights in a market from a revenue standpoint, they are better than very early departures or very late arrivals.

    Because WN has so many mid-continent hubs, they will have alot of “pink eyes” which means departures just before midnight or arrivals before 6 am.

    finally, increasing the number of long domestic flights makes better use of the 738s and MAX8s which do not do well on high frequency short routes but will help to pump more traffic onto first flights in WN focus cities.

    The speed with which WN will add focus cities is amazing and I will bet they will have one of the biggest impacts on improving WN’s financials as they couple redeyes w/ other schedule improvements during the peak summer season.

    1. This is very anecdotal, but based on my experience those very early morning flights were always packed. In fact, I would think it was a preferred alternative to a red eye (when it works for the customer’s schedule).

      The very early morning flights were also a deciding factor for me choosing Southwest over American @ PHX. Often times AA’s first flights of the day were later in the morning to accommodate connecting flight traffic while WN’s first flights were several hours earlier.

      1. if you look at pricing on those flights compared to flights later in the day, the very early departures and late night arrivals are often lower priced…however, other legacy carriers including AA and DL have first flights between 5 and 5.30 to their biggest hubs. There is a segment of the population that likes very early first flights and they do allow midday arrivals even w/ a connection in ATL, DFW, CLT etc

        I suspect the biggest change in schedules will be getting rid of a late day departure – such as a medium haul after 8 pm or short haul after 10 pm- and using that airplane for a redeye

        WN will undoubtedly be doing lots of schedule changes trying to figure out their network w/ redeyes

        1. I’ve noticed that as well when I chose flights to go to Las Vegas. The early flights were the cheap

    2. “Pink eyes” is a new one for me, Tim; especially given the health implication… always heard them called “moonlight” flights at the airline I previously worked at

      1. West Coast to HOU isn’t much farther than West Coast to DAL, however, and there are several WN redeyes to HOU (though SEA-HOU is actually a reasonable distance for a redeye, at 1,894 miles + a 2 hour time difference).

        I imagine that WN will try redeyes touching DAL and MCI (if the locals there will let WN do such flights) in the future. Plenty more opportunities to try in the future.

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