People who wanted a $19 airfare, that's who... those HP graveyard specials out of LAS were CHEAP.

There are still remnants of them, occasionally I've flown out of PHX and gotten into SEA at Stupid AM on a west coast redeye out of PHX. Because it was MUCH cheaper than flying at a sane hour.

Plenty of people. I did it a lot, sometimes to do a day trip to Las Vegas and see a concert, or if I wanted a full day on the west coast or even the east coast and to make it back to Phoenix without burning another hotel night.

Back in the mid-2000s HP 99 was the 1 AM flight and it was known as the Crew Hauler as so many deadheads were on it.

I took that flight 17x in one month about 7 years ago! Many unproductive work days followed when I got off the flights.

That flight always had an incredible standby list. It was one of the rare flights where even with 100 open seats they would sometimes still leave nonrevs behind.

I have taken that flight a couple times. It is not something I hope to ever do again.

What, the LAS-IAH redeye? Yeah, I took it once. Never again. And that was in F!

Same here. Got me back into DC in time for pretty much a full day's work (on a mid-day shift). I was much younger and in better health then. Didn't really need sleep. Or so I thought. I was wrong. That's why my health was sooo much better than.

115A LAS - IAH 605A

After a full day and night in Vegas, one needs sleep, and not a red-eye to change planes in Houston at 6 in the morning.

Yes. Caesar's and MGM are paying the airlines to limit late-night flights out of Vegas. They need to do this: otherwise the entire Vegas business model would fail and the place would go back to being a dusty backwater with nothing but a few small-time mobsters.

And the company that operates those concourse slot machines is the one who originally came up with the idea that you need to arrive 2 hours before your flight. This company also periodically pays the ATC tower at LAS to fake a weather delay.

This was a great strategy for increasing utilization of a small fleet of planes in the 80's and 90's. Plus, as others have mentioned, LAS was the major center of gaming at that time.

In essence, US moved that late night hub to PHX, but only during peak times (summer peak days and holiday peak travel days). US operated it pretty much all summer, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Now, AA still operated a late night bank during peak periods, but not as frequently as US.

Thank you for confirming:)

Around 1990, I was at MCO flying on Continental to SLC via IAH. It was the last MCO - IAH flight of the night. The GA announced that the flight would be delayed because of a ground hold in IAH (lightning storm) and also that the flight needed one volunteer to give up their seat and fly the next morning.

I rushed to the podium and said I would take the compensation but only if they would put me on that night's America West flight to LAS and the middle of the night flight from LAS to SLC. In that era, Continental and America West were BFFs, so she agreed and gave me an op up to F.

There was not enough time for my luggage to be pulled and retagged, so it made the original trip. As I suspected, by the time the delayed MCO - IAH flight finally got to Houston, the connecting flight to SLC had already left, so my luggage had to spend the night at IAH. Thanks to the Vegas night hub, I escaped having to do likewise.