No more late night flights LAS><PHX Conspiracy?
Jul 14, 2017, 2:44 pm
#16
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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.
Jul 15, 2017, 8:47 pm
#17
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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.
Jul 16, 2017, 5:05 am
#18
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I took that flight 17x in one month about 7 years ago! Many unproductive work days followed when I got off the flights.
Jul 16, 2017, 12:07 pm
#19
Join Date: Jun 2017
Posts: 10
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.
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.
Jul 16, 2017, 9:20 pm
#20
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: IAH / HOU
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I have taken that flight a couple times. It is not something I hope to ever do again.
Jul 17, 2017, 3:52 pm
#22
Join Date: Nov 2014
Posts: 597
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.
Jul 17, 2017, 4:00 pm
#23
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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.
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.
Jul 17, 2017, 4:19 pm
#24
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America West had a dual hub - with more daytime focus on PHX and more nighttime focus on LAS. If, for example, you were flying from DCA to LAX in the evening, you could leave DCA around 830pm, arrive at LAS at 11pm, toss some quarters in the slots in the terminal (which had awful payback rates), and catch a midnight flight to LAX. That terminal was hopping between 11pm and 130am.
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.
Jul 17, 2017, 8:47 pm
#26
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Posts: 9,996
I was thankful for the late night LAS-PHX service a few years ago when LAS was still a LUS hub.. Our MBJ-CLT flight was delayed due to weather and as a result we misconnected on our CLT-PHX flight home (got to the gate to see the aircraft being pushed back from the gate after a pretty quick immigration/CBP process - if only US hadn't taken so long to get the bags unloaded, or we would have been fine) There was a CLT-LAS flight about 15 mins after our original flight and with the late night LAS-PHX service still operational, we were only about 2.5 hrs late in getting home. The bags were a different story though! 
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.