Originally Posted by
LarryJ
Red-eyes from the west coast to the east coast work because of the timezones. Depart the west coast at 11:00 pm and arrive at the east coast at 7:00 am in time for a full day at the destination or a connection to the early morning departures. Westbound the timezones work against you. If you did it west bound you'd be departing at 11:00 pm and arriving 2:00 am; a schedule for which there is not a lot of demand....
Exactly. Also why Hawaii works for West Coast afternoon departures, turn, and 5 am redeye arrivals to West Coast.
Eastern Airlines (in their death-rattle before CO bought it) tried to keep their planes busy in the early a.m. hours for a while trying to be a freight carrier. They used Houston as a hub and allowed passenger to board these midnight-ish flights for, like, $49 iirc. Only carry-on was allowed to make room for the cargo's weight. Didn't pan out because no one, even at $49, wanted to get someplace at 3 or 4 in the morning after leaving at midnight.